XRP Price Forecast – XRP-USD Rebuilds Above $1.40 After a 43% Slide From $2.40

XRP PRICE REBUILDS MOMENTUM AROUND THE $1.40–$1.47 PIVOT

SPOT FLOWS, ETF DEMAND AND THE SHIFT FROM CAPITULATION TO ACCUMULATION

XRP-USD has snapped back from the $1.34–$1.37 area into roughly $1.42–$1.47, with a single session move of about 6% off the lows and intraday pushes toward $1.43–$1.47 while bitcoin climbed back toward $67,000–$68,000. The structure of this rebound matters more than the headline percentage: the clean break above $1.37 came with volume jumping to roughly 259 million units, more than double a typical recent day, which is exactly what you want to see when a former ceiling tries to flip into fresh support. That move comes immediately after a two-month bleed that took XRP down around 43% from the early-January spike near $2.40 to roughly $1.40 and left the market staring at a potential fifth straight red monthly candle, something not seen since 2017. The tape is now trying to turn that exhaustion into a base, but it has to prove that the demand at $1.37–$1.40 is real and not just a one-day short squeeze.

RETAIL ORDERBOOKS: 212% BUYING SURGE AND A CLEAR CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR

Exchange data from Bitrue shows how sharply behaviour flipped once XRP punched through $1.37. Between February 23 and 24, spot purchase volume in XRP jumped by 212%, and buy orders outpaced sells by more than two-to-one. That is not the profile of a tired market grinding higher on fumes; it is what you tend to see when sidelined cash has been waiting for a level to lean against and finally gets a trigger. This matters because the previous leg down was dominated by forced selling and fear, with real-money participants realizing about $1.93 billion in losses during the mid-February washout. That kind of loss realization typically wipes out impatient leverage and late entrants. When you then see a 200%+ spike in spot buying, it signals that the float is being re-distributed into stronger hands rather than shuffled among the same fast money.

ETF INFLOWS: $1.1 BILLION BASE AND A QUIET ROTATION AWAY FROM BITCOIN

Alongside the spot flows, the new XRP exchange-traded funds have quietly built a meaningful footprint. Since their launch in mid-November, those vehicles have amassed about $1.1 billion in net assets and have managed to log positive weekly inflows with only a handful of small outflow days. That behaviour contrasts sharply with bitcoin ETFs, which are running negative on a year-to-date basis. The implication is straightforward: capital is not abandoning the asset class, it is shifting its weight inside it. When ETF money is bleeding out of BTC while staying net positive in XRP, it tells you that portfolios are experimenting with rebalancing away from the most crowded trade and toward names with a different risk/reward profile. That steady institutional buying line is precisely what allows a token to weather multi-week price drawdowns without seeing its structure collapse completely.

STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: SIX OUT OF SEVEN RED WEEKS AND THE $1.00 BACKSTOP

The rebound needs to be read against a brutally hostile backdrop. Since the turn of 2026, XRP has printed six red weekly candles out of seven, taking it from that $2.40 spike in early January to the $1.40 region by late February. CryptoPotato’s structure map of $1.00 as major support and $1.40 as first resistance captured that slide well: $1.40 failed as a floor, flipped into a cap and has only now been reclaimed from below. The key point is that the larger trend is still down on the weekly chart. A market that has closed red in six of seven weeks does not magically become healthy on one strong daily candle. For that reason, $1.00 remains the structural “line in the sand” for this cycle. As long as XRP-USD holds comfortably above that level, the longer-term bull case can argue this is a deep, extended correction; a decisive weekly close under $1.00 would turn it into a full reset.

DAILY MOMENTUM: BULLISH MACD AGAINST A BEARISH PRICE TAPE

Despite the heavy price action since January, the daily MACD has quietly turned constructive. The histogram has flipped positive and stayed there, even while candles remain under the prior $1.40–$1.50 supply zone. That kind of divergence, where momentum stabilizes before price, often precedes complex basing patterns rather than clean V-shaped reversals. If the positive MACD structure holds while XRP-USD continues to grind above $1.37–$1.40, the odds increase that the market is tracing out a multi-leg reversal that could carry it back toward $1.50 and then $1.57 over the next impulse. If the MACD rolls back below zero while price loses $1.37 again, this attempt will have been nothing more than a textbook bear-market rally.

SHORT-TERM LEVELS: $1.37 BREAKOUT, $1.40–$1.42 BASE, $1.45–$1.57 RANGE

On the lower time frames, the market has now defined a clear set of reference points. The first key trigger was the breakout above $1.37, where the large volume spike hit. That level is now the first support to watch on any intraday pullback. The immediate battle zone sits at $1.40–$1.42; that band needs to transition from reactive barrier to active base if buyers are serious. Above, the next obvious supply pocket is clustered around $1.45, where prior attempts stalled. A sustained close above $1.45 opens the path toward $1.50 and, beyond that, the more ambitious $1.57 target flagged by short-term traders as the top of the current rebound window. Lose $1.40 with momentum and then slip back through $1.37, and the entire breakout risks being reclassified as a failed move that sends XRP back into the prior range.

MEDIUM-TERM SENTIMENT: FROM STANDARD CHARTERED’S $2.80 CUT TO AI-DRIVEN UPSIDE SCENARIOS

Macro views on XRP’s medium-term path have diverged sharply. Standard Chartered has slashed its 2026 target from $8 to $2.80 after the 43% year-to-date slide, trimming its expectation by roughly 65% and explicitly pointing to ETF outflows, tighter Federal Reserve policy and poor sentiment as justification. On the other side, six separate AI-driven forecasting frameworks all cluster higher, with baseline scenarios between roughly $2.15 and $5 for the end of 2026 and stretch cases that push into the $8–$10 area. The more conservative engines cap XRP around $3–$4, citing liquidity constraints and competition from chains like Solana and Stellar, while the most optimistic models argue that aggressive ETF inflows, shrinking exchange balances and rapid banking adoption could support double-digit pricing. The key is not to fixate on any single headline number but to observe that almost all systematic approaches, even cautious ones, are still penciling in levels above the $2.80 bank mark if adoption plays out.

UTILITY AND PAYMENT RAILS: REAL CORRIDORS, SOUTH KOREAN VOLUME AND ODL INFRASTRUCTURE

Beyond charts and forecasts, the fundamental story around XRP-USD has shifted materially over the last year. The token is not just trading as a macro proxy; it is already embedded in active payment corridors. South Korea is a case study where XRP has become one of the most heavily traded assets, a sign that real cross-border flow is being routed through its rails. Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity network continues to stitch together banks, remittance providers and fintechs in regions where legacy correspondent banking is expensive or slow. The argument from the more structural bulls is clear: every dollar of recurring payment volume that moves through these corridors does not merely generate fees, it cements XRP’s role as a base layer asset in a specific piece of global infrastructure.

XRPL AS AN ASSET PLATFORM: TREASURY TOKENIZATION AND USDC INTEGRATION

The XRP Ledger itself is evolving into more than just a transfer rail. Recent moves to tokenize U.S. Treasury debt on XRPL show that fixed-income instruments, not just native tokens, are now being pulled on-chain. At the same time, Circle has launched USDC natively on the ledger, turning XRPL into a first-class home for one of the largest regulated stablecoins. Every asset issued, moved or settled on XRPL requires XRP for transaction fees and often as a bridge asset when liquidity has to hop between instruments. That means growth in tokenized treasuries, stablecoins and other real-world assets feeds directly back into baseline XRP demand, even if the price tape is dominated day-to-day by macro narratives and ETF flows.

REGULATORY RESET: POST-SEC SETTLEMENT, $125 MILLION FINE AND THE CLARITY PREMIUM

The overhang from the long-running U.S. enforcement saga has finally been cleared. Ripple closed out nearly seven years of litigation with the SEC in 2025, paying a $125 million penalty and removing the existential question mark that had hung over XRP in U.S. markets. That regulatory clarity is not just a legal footnote. It is why you are now seeing XRP ETFs listed, why U.S. institutions can discuss exposure in a more straightforward way, and why rails and tokenization projects can be built without constant fear of a retroactive classification shock. The “clarity premium” does not guarantee a straight price line higher, but it changes the probability distribution: large players can now make decade-scale planning decisions around XRPL without having to guess whether the underlying asset will be outlawed in its core jurisdiction.

LONG-HORIZON THESIS: RAILS ARE BUILT FOR THROUGHPUT, NOT FOR FUN

One of the more important qualitative arguments coming from structural bulls is that nobody builds settlement rails at this scale as a hobby project. Building, deploying and maintaining corridors, tokenization frameworks, and on-ledger stablecoin integrations takes capital, time and reputational risk. The logic is that the ecosystem of banks, fintechs and service providers wiring themselves into XRP-USD infrastructure is doing so with a multi-year time horizon. If those rails continue to see rising volumes—remittances, trade flows, RWA issuance, on-chain treasuries—the underlying token stands to benefit from both fee demand and the credibility that comes from being systemically embedded. That is the core difference between this current cycle and earlier phases where price was almost entirely driven by speculative waves.

SCENARIO GRID FOR 2026: CONSERVATIVE, BASE AND BULL CASES

A reasonable framework for the next 18–24 months has three lanes. In a conservative path, ETF flows stabilize, payment volumes rise but remain modest, and macro conditions stay choppy. Under that setup, a recovery into the $2.00–$3.00 band by late 2026 lines up with both Standard Chartered’s cut $2.80 target and the lower end of the AI forecast cluster. In a base case, ETF assets continue to grind higher from the current $1.1 billion, exchange balances keep shrinking, payment corridors scale gradually and the February drawdown proves to be a mid-cycle reset. That kind of environment supports a band somewhere in the $3.00–$5.00 region once the current $1.00–$2.40 range is resolved. The stretch case requires an aggressive acceleration in ETF inflows (multi-billion dollars, not just $1.1 billion), a clean macro tailwind and clear evidence that XRPL has become a default platform for tokenized treasuries, stablecoins and cross-border flows. Only under that kind of perfect alignment does a $8–$10 print become realistic.

RISK MAP: FALSE BREAKOUT, MACRO SHOCK AND CROWDED OPTIMISM

There is no shortage of risk. Technically, the most immediate danger is that the push above $1.37 fails, XRP-USD slips back below $1.37–$1.40, and the move is revealed as a classic bull trap inside a larger downtrend. Below that, $1.00 remains the key structural floor; a weekly close under that level would force a full rewrite of the current bullish narratives. On the macro side, tighter liquidity, a more aggressive Federal Reserve, or renewed risk-off moves in equities and bitcoin could drain demand from high-beta alts quickly. There is also the risk of sentiment overshooting on the upside: if ETF-driven optimism forces the price too far, too fast, without matching fundamental traction, the next shakeout could again be violent, as the February episode already demonstrated.

FINAL VERDICT ON XRP-USD: BULLISH BIAS WITH TIGHT LEVELS, LEANING BUY

Putting it all together, XRP-USD is still trading inside the scar tissue of a 43% year-to-date drawdown and six red weeks out of seven, but the combination of a clean breakout above $1.37, 259 million volume on that move, a 212% jump in spot buying, roughly $1.1 billion parked in XRP ETFs and a clear long-term utility story around real payment corridors and XRPL asset issuance tilts the balance away from outright pessimism. While price holds above $1.37–$1.40, the bias is constructive, with $1.45, $1.50 and then $1.57 as the logical upside checkpoints. A sustained break of $1.37 would downgrade the setup to neutral, and a loss of $1.00 would flip the medium-term picture to decisively negative. With those caveats, the current configuration supports a Buy stance for those willing to accept volatility and manage risk against the $1.37 and $1.00 lines, and a Hold stance for anyone already positioned and focused on the multi-year adoption story rather than the next weekly candle.

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