Grayscale’s CoinDesk Crypto 5 ETF cut its XRP holdings by 27.1 percent over its 2026 fiscal year, an SEC filing shows, with the position’s fair value falling even harder, from $39.14 million to $12.83 million. The fund ended the year holding 12.3 million XRP, down from 16.87 million a year earlier, according to the filing reviewed by Coinpaper and Bitget News.
What the filing shows
The numbers come from Grayscale’s annual report to the SEC. Three forces worked against the XRP sleeve: shareholder redemptions, management fees paid in kind, and a large unrealized depreciation on the position itself. The filing puts that unrealized loss at $28 million for the year.
Even after the cut, XRP remains the fourth-largest asset in the fund at 4.15 percent of net assets. The fund tracks the CoinDesk 5 index, which holds bitcoin, ether, solana, XRP and cardano, so the XRP weight moves with both the token’s price and its index standing. When a component’s market cap falls relative to the others, the index rebalances and the fund trims accordingly, which is exactly what happened here.
The 67 percent drop in fair value is steeper than the 27 percent drop in token count, which points to the price decline doing most of the damage. XRP has traded far below its 2025 highs all year, sitting around $1.35 in recent sessions after peaking near $3.40 in mid-2025. The token is down roughly 43 percent year to date.
Not a strategic exit
Analysts who reviewed the filing stress that the reduction reflects portfolio mechanics rather than a deliberate exit by Grayscale. Index funds shrink a position when redemptions force share creation and redemption activity, and when fees are paid from the underlying assets. The fund continues to hold XRP and Grayscale has publicly pointed to growth potential in XRP ETF adoption.
That said, the direction of travel across Grayscale’s XRP products has been down for most of the year. The separate Grayscale XRP Trust ETF sold more than $180 million worth of XRP in the first half of 2026, cutting its holdings from 122.23 million tokens at the end of 2025 to 55.04 million by June 30, its 10-Q showed. That fund booked $34.16 million in realized losses on redemptions and $17.47 million in unrealized losses. It also created 36.27 million new XRP worth $66.58 million during the same period, but outflows exceeded inflows.
Share counts in the XRP Trust fell roughly 51 percent in six months, from 5.79 million shares outstanding to about 2.84 million, a sign that redemptions outpaced creations. Grayscale CEO Peter Mintzberg filed notice in July to sell a small block of GXRP shares for about $53,000, the third insider filing at the firm this year. Founder Barry Silbert and chief legal officer Craig Salm filed earlier in January, near $37 per share. Mintzberg marked his block at $20.45. Neither the filings nor the company has explained the share count drop publicly.
The wider XRP ETF picture
The broader XRP ETF market tells a split story. US spot XRP ETFs held about $1.57 billion in assets in mid-September, and reported ETF vault holdings have crept higher, passing 1.118 billion XRP in mid-September. Week 37 net flow stayed positive at about 1.11 million XRP, worth roughly $1.5 million, even as the token fell 3 percent in a day.
Daily volumes are modest. Bitwise’s XRP fund turned over $19 million in a recent session, Franklin Templeton $7.4 million, and Canary Capital $2.4 million. Grayscale’s own XRP fund managed under $700,000. The institutional footprint grows slowly and quietly beneath the daily price action rather than in bursts, and custody counts rise even on red price days.
Institutional interest has cooled from earlier in the year. XRP ETF inflows collapsed from $132 million in May to $27 million in July as the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate. Goldman Sachs liquidated its entire position in GXRP and three other XRP ETFs in the first quarter, and also dumped its Solana ETF holdings while trimming bitcoin and ether exposure. The bank has since publicly endorsed the CLARITY Act, but its XRP position remains at zero.
The legislative catalyst ahead
The September 15 cloture vote on the CLARITY Act is the next big test. The bill would codify XRP’s commodity status in federal law and split SEC and CFTC authority over digital assets. Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty has said the vote decides the bill’s fate, warning that failure would leave the US behind on crypto regulation and expose the market to fraud.
The math is unforgiving. The bill needs 60 votes in a Senate where Republicans hold 53 seats, and only two Democrats are publicly behind it. Senator Cynthia Lummis has said even Republican support will not be unanimous, noting Senator Josh Hawley’s resistance. Prediction markets put 2026 passage odds near 14 percent, down from 82 percent in February. The Senate shelved the bill in late July to prioritize a Russia sanctions bill, and the midterms loom as the deadline after this window.
For Grayscale, the Crypto 5 filing lands at an awkward moment. The firm is pitching multi-asset crypto funds to institutions while its own filings show the weakest sleeve of the index shrinking. Whether the XRP weight stabilizes depends less on Grayscale than on whether the Senate sends the CLARITY Act to the floor, and on where the token trades once the Fed’s September 16 decision is out. A hot August inflation print already pushed rate hike odds above 80 percent, and that macro backdrop has weighed on every crypto asset this month, with bitcoin ETFs posting four straight days of outflows last week while ethereum funds took in $216 million on Friday.