On-chain holder data from Santiment suggests crypto adoption keeps climbing, even while market prices show no clear bullish pattern.
Santiment measures this using holder count, meaning the number of addresses with non-empty balances. Using that lens, CoinDesk says Bitcoin is approaching a major milestone at about 59.08 million non-empty wallets, putting it close to 60 million.
CoinDesk also links Bitcoin’s wallet growth to a pickup in institutional demand. It cites SoSoValue, saying Spot Bitcoin ETF flows returned to positive in March and April after four straight months of net outflows from late November 2025 through February 2026 totaling about $4 billion.
XRP keeps adding users, despite weak price context
For XRP, CoinDesk reports Santiment’s non-empty wallet count at 7.8 million. That number looks smaller than Bitcoin’s, but CoinDesk frames it as steady. It says the growth reflects unusual consistency over the past 18 months since XRP started trading in the US again.
CoinDesk adds a contrast that matters for interpretation. It notes that XRP has not posted the kind of price performance that would typically be expected alongside a rising holder base. That does not remove the risk. It just highlights that wallet growth and price action can diverge.
Ethereum dominates the leaderboard
Santiment’s snapshot also points to Ethereum as the scale outlier. CoinDesk says Ethereum is nearing 190 million non-empty wallets for the first time in its history, at 189.5 million, which it frames as 3.2 times Bitcoin’s holder count.
CoinDesk also provides context against other assets. It says XRP’s 7.8 million non-empty wallets sit below Dogecoin’s 8.25 million and Tether’s 13.61 million. It also places XRP above USDC’s 6.76 million, Cardano’s 4.63 million, and Chainlink’s 870,720.
Adoption still tied to regulation expectations
CoinDesk closes with broader adoption estimates. It cites research estimating about 559 million people own cryptocurrency in 2026, which it says equals a 9.9% global adoption rate. CoinDesk also says further growth is expected as clearer regulation takes shape in the US and other major jurisdictions.
Holder counts are useful signals, but they are not guarantees of returns. They reflect on-chain participation, not investor outcomes.