XRP Price Forecast: XRP-USD Stuck Below $2.00 With $1.80 Support and Fed Week on the Line

XRP-USD macro backdrop: Fed, gold and risk-off pressure

XRP-USD is trading in a hostile macro setting. The Federal Reserve decision on January 28 is the next main volatility event, and the entire crypto complex is trading cautiously into it. While XRP chops around the $1.80–$1.95 band, Bitcoin sits just below $88,000 and Ether around $2,900, all under pressure from tighter financial conditions and de-risking across risk assets. At the same time, spot gold has hit an all-time high near $5,110.50 per ounce after a 64% rally in 2025 and roughly another 18% gain already this year, a textbook signal that capital prefers hard safety over speculative beta. Trump’s tariff threats on European NATO members, shutdown risk in the US, and a Fed that is not rushing to cut rates all combine into a macro regime that punishes leverage and compresses valuations. In that environment, XRP is being traded as high-beta risk: every bounce is sold faster, and any good micro news has to fight head-on against macro selling pressure.

XRP-USD spot structure and key trading range

Price action is compressed into a narrow but very important range. Across the feeds you brought, XRP-USD is quoted around $1.83–$1.92, with intraday swings roughly between $1.81 and $1.91 and occasional prints near $1.89. The market has already retraced from about $2.40 down into the high $1.80s, erasing most of the early-year recovery. The critical horizontal support band sits at $1.84–$1.80. This is where buyers repeatedly step in; lose this zone on a decisive daily or weekly close and the risk opens quickly toward $1.73–$1.70 and then the April low at $1.61. Some analyses you pasted even flag a scenario where a full capitulation washout could send XRP below $1.00 if liquidations and macro shocks combine. On the upside, immediate resistance is $1.92–$1.95, where repeated rejection shows that sellers still control every attempt to reclaim $2.00. Above that, the true pivot band is $2.01–$2.05. A sustained break and hold above $2.05 would flip psychological $2.00 into support, attack the short-term moving averages, and open the door toward $2.10–$2.20 and a potential retest of $2.40 if flows improve. Until XRP-USD can convincingly hold above $2.05, the market is treating this zone as a vulnerable pause within a broader downtrend, not as the start of a sustained leg higher.

Exchange reserves and whale flows: mounting sell-side overhang on XRP-USD

On-chain exchange data is clearly skewed to the bearish side. CryptoQuant numbers show that XRP reserves on the main trading venues have been rising since the start of January 2026. Binance now holds about 2.72 billion XRP, while Upbit balances have climbed to roughly 6.3 billion XRP. Combined, exchange reserves account for close to 10% of the circulating supply. That is a large block of tokens that can be sold at any moment. The correlation between Upbit balances and price is particularly important: since Korean investors started pushing more XRP into Upbit in the first week of January, XRP has slid from around $2.40 to the $1.80s. That inverse relationship tells you the flows are not neutral; they are preparation for selling or at least for optionality to sell. At the same time, whale-to-exchange transaction counts on Binance have risen, indicating that large holders are sending size directly to order-book venues, not to cold storage. This behavior usually appears before or during distribution phases. It does not guarantee an immediate crash, but it confirms that if macro or ETF flows trigger a risk-off leg, there is ample inventory sitting on exchanges that can accelerate a move lower in XRP-USD.

ETF flows and institutional sentiment: strong base, fragile marginal demand for XRP-USD

The ETF layer is mixed: structurally positive, tactically unstable. Since launch, spot XRP ETFs have attracted real institutional capital. December 2025 alone saw roughly $483 million in net XRP ETF inflows while Bitcoin ETFs lost about $1.09 billion during tax-loss harvesting, signaling a genuine rotation into XRP from some institutional players. Cumulative net inflows now sit around $1.23 billion, with total net assets at about $1.36 billion as of January 23, and daily ETF trading volumes frequently print in the $20–$80 million range. That is not retail noise; it is proper institutional usage of XRP-USD products. However, the short-term pattern has turned more cautious. There have been two notable outflow days since November 2025: about $40.80 million on January 7 and a record $53.32 million on January 20, with the latter primarily coming out of Grayscale’s GXRP as Trump’s tariff escalation triggered a broad risk-off move. These outflows show institutions will reduce exposure quickly when macro shocks hit. Meyka’s interpretation is that recent ETF trends reveal a softening of marginal demand even though the total stock of ETF assets remains high. AI models in your data use those flows as a key driver: they project that if ETF inflows stay stuck or turn negative, XRP-USD is likely to gravitate toward a wide consolidation around $1.50–$1.80 rather than expand toward the $4–$6 band that some bullish scenarios attach to inflows north of $5–$10 billion. Right now, the message from institutional flows is simple: there is meaningful capital in XRP, but the incremental buyer has stepped back.

On-chain activity and derivatives: conviction in XRP-USD is weaker than in early January

Ledger usage and derivatives positioning both show fading conviction. Active addresses on the XRP Ledger have declined from roughly 51,600 around January 5 to a 45,000–49,500 range more recently, depending on the dataset. That drop of about 3–12% in a few weeks is not catastrophic, but it signals that fewer users are transacting and fewer real-economy transfers are occurring through XRPL, which translates into softer underlying demand for XRP as a bridge asset. Profitability metrics have reset aggressively. The percentage of circulating supply held in profit has plunged from roughly 80.4% in November and 77.2% in early January to about 50.4% now. That means half of all XRP is no longer in profit. In the short term, that shift hurts: early-stage corrections drive a wave of profit-taking; later-stage corrections force weaker holders to capitulate at a loss. The current level suggests many newer buyers are under water, which explains the risk-off mood and lack of aggressive dip-buying. On the derivatives side, open interest has contracted from about $4.55 billion on January 6 to roughly $3.26 billion, a drop close to 28%. This is not a spike liquidation and rebound; it is a steady bleed of leverage out of the system. Traders are closing positions and not reopening them at scale. Altogether, on-chain and derivatives data tell the same story: short-term traders are de-risking, and the remaining holders are more long-term, but they are not strong enough yet to reverse the downtrend in XRP-USD.

Technical picture: XRP-USD oversold bounce within a dominant downtrend

The technical structure is textbook “oversold bounce inside a broader bearish trend.” On the momentum side, the daily RSI has recovered from deeply oversold levels back up to around 42. That is an improvement, but it still sits below the 50 neutral line, which means bears maintain control of the trend. MACD remains below its signal line and histogram bars are printing under zero, confirming that downward momentum is not fully exhausted. Trend indicators reinforce the same conclusion. XRP-USD trades below the 50-day EMA around $2.03, the 100-day EMA near $2.16 and the 200-day EMA around $2.29. When price sits beneath all three, the market is in a structurally bearish regime. Attempts to reclaim the 50-day EMA at $2.03 have so far failed, aligning with repeated rejections in the $1.92–$1.95 area. From a pure price-action angle, the $1.84–$1.80 zone is an obvious inflection support. As long as it holds, traders can argue for a short-term base and potential mean reversion toward $2.05. If that band breaks and XRP-USD closes decisively below $1.80, the pattern shifts from a corrective channel into a continuation of the dominant downtrend, with $1.73–$1.70 and $1.61 as the next realistic targets. On the upside, bulls need a daily close above $2.05 and follow-through toward $2.10–$2.20 to confirm that the worst of the current leg is behind them.

Regulation and adoption: Japan classification, RLUSD and the DXC banking hook

The structural fundamentals behind XRP-USD are still moving in the right direction, even if that has not translated into immediate price support. Japan is working on treating XRP as a regulated financial asset under its Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. That kind of classification in a G7 jurisdiction lowers compliance friction for local institutions and signals to other regulators that XRP can be slotted into existing frameworks rather than treated as an unregulated outlier. On the product side, Ripple is pushing RLUSD, its USD-pegged stablecoin on the XRP Ledger, into more concrete use cases with partners across multiple countries. RLUSD, combined with XRPL’s native features, gives banks and fintechs a straightforward way to move tokenized dollars over a high-throughput ledger. The DXC Technology deal takes this one level further. DXC’s Hogan core banking platform manages more than 300 million deposit accounts and over $5 trillion in deposits. Integrating Ripple’s digital-asset custody, RLUSD, and payment rails into Hogan means XRP and RLUSD are being wired into core banking infrastructure, not just speculative exchanges. In parallel, DeFi activity on XRPL is rising; Token Relations notes increasing demand for XRPL-based DeFi products and better-than-expected XRP ETF adoption metrics for an altcoin. These developments do not cancel the macro, ETF, or exchange-reserve headwinds overnight, but they build the long-term case that XRP-USD is tied to serious payment and custody infrastructure rather than hype alone.

Macro and regulatory headwinds: why near-term skew remains negative for XRP-USD

Despite solid adoption narratives, short-term bias for XRP-USD is still tilted negative because three heavy forces are aligned against it. First, macro liquidity is tight. Central banks are not in a hurry to cut rates, real yields remain attractive, and investors have viable low-risk alternatives that offer positive returns. That drains capital away from high-volatility assets like XRP-USD. Second, regulatory clarity is incomplete, especially in the US. While the SEC case against Ripple has been partially resolved, broader crypto market-structure legislation is stuck. Every delay keeps uncertainty high for compliance departments and investment committees, which results in lower allocation limits and slower decision cycles for anything tied to XRP. Third, institutional appetite via ETFs has shifted from aggressive accumulation to cautious maintenance. The net stock of XRP ETF assets is high, but the marginal flows have turned choppy with significant single-day outflows. That pattern, combined with rising exchange reserves and falling open interest, is not what you see in the early stages of a major bull leg. It is what you see in a consolidation or distribution phase where the market is waiting for either macro relief or a genuine reset lower to clear the slate.

Sentiment split on XRP-USD: capitulation versus local bottom narrative

The community and analysts are split between exhaustion and opportunity. The capitulation camp stresses the drawdown from $2.40 to the high $1.80s, the risk of a further 45% slide if $1.88–$1.80 breaks, and the weakening on-chain metrics. For them, the combination of rising exchange reserves, waning ETF inflows, and fading derivatives interest looks like the middle act of a deeper bear move, not the end. The local-bottom camp focuses on the reset in profitability from more than 80% of supply in profit to around 50.4%, interpreting it as a necessary clearing-out of weak hands. They highlight signs of quiet accumulation by long-term holders, the regulatory progress in Japan, the DXC banking partnership, RLUSD expansion, and XRPL DeFi growth as building blocks for a future re-rating once macro pressure eases. Both sides can be partially right. XRP-USD can easily spend months in a wide chop between $1.50 and $2.20, punishing both premature bulls and impatient bears, while fundamentals improve in the background. Until one of the key levels breaks decisively – $1.80 on the downside or $2.05 on the upside – the tape will remain driven by short-term flows and external events rather than clean trend signals.

AI and model forecasts: clustered stability around $2.05–$2.15 on XRP-USD

The AI and model forecasts in your material converge on a surprisingly tight range for the near term, which reinforces the idea of constrained volatility rather than immediate collapse or runaway rally. Claude AI puts XRP-USD around $2.15 by late January 2026, about 10% above current spot levels near $1.95 and slightly above the $1.83–$1.92 trading band you provided. Gemini 2.5 Flash lands in exactly the same area, also around $2.15. The blended average across major AI models centers near $2.12, while ChatGPT’s projection at roughly $2.05 is marginally more conservative. All these systems digest macro, ETF flows, on-chain data, and technical momentum and still cluster in a very narrow $2.05–$2.15 window, essentially saying that unless something breaks, XRP-USD is more likely to oscillate around $2 than to immediately test $4 or $1. The same models then expand into conditional longer-term paths. In bullish regimes, where ETF inflows exceed $5–$10 billion, exchange balances decline, and regulatory clarity improves, they allow for ranges as high as $4–$6 and, under extreme assumptions, even $8–$14 later in the cycle. In bearish regimes, where macro tightens further, ETF demand softens and supply on exchanges grows, they keep XRP-USD stuck closer to $1.50–$1.80 with frequent failed rallies. Meyka’s internal grading gives XRPUSD an AI score of F and a one-month forecast near $1.69 with a one-year target around $4.33, which again distills into the same message: near-term pressure and noise, with asymmetric long-term optionality if structural catalysts actually deliver.

Buy, sell or hold: positioning on XRP-USD given the current data

Putting all layers together, the honest conclusion is that XRP-USD does not currently justify an outright aggressive long or a panic exit purely on the numbers you provided. Short term, the setup is tactically bearish to neutral. Exchange reserves are elevated, whales are sending coins to venues, on-chain activity is softening, derivatives interest is fading, and macro is hostile. Technically, XRP-USD is below all major moving averages and still trapped under $2.00–$2.05, with $1.80 as a fragile floor. That combination argues against calling this a clean high-conviction buy right here. At the same time, the structural story is not broken. ETFs still show $1.23 billion in cumulative net inflows and $1.36 billion in assets. Regulatory progress in Japan, RLUSD expansion, the DXC core-banking integration, and rising XRPL DeFi usage are real adoption drivers, not marketing noise. Profitability has reset, many weak holders have already been flushed, and AI models converge around moderate stability rather than collapse. With that mix, the rational stance on the data you supplied is a firm hold on XRP-USD with a bearish short-term skew and a conditional bullish long-term bias. In practical terms, that means treating the $1.80–$1.84 band as the critical stop zone and the $2.01–$2.05 band as the first real signal that the market is ready to start repricing higher. Until one of those breaks cleanly, the tape is a trader’s range and a long-term investor’s patience test, not a clear-cut buy or sell. Not investment advice.

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