Ripple’s XRP is caught in a crossfire of contrasting signals. The token’s price has slumped to $1.07, down 6.2% on the day, even as a string of bullish developments — from an institutional bank entry to an EU licence and a shrinking exchange supply — suggests the fundamentals are aligning. The market’s inability to sustain recent gains above $1.13 has left XRP trading 8.94% below its 50-day moving average of $1.18, with the 200-day average at $1.47 still a distant target.
The supply picture is tightening notably. On Binance, XRP reserves have fallen to a two-year low of around 2.6 billion tokens, down from roughly 2.8 billion in November 2024. The exchange’s derived scarcity index has climbed to 0.77, the highest since mid-2024. A similar trend appears across all trading platforms: just 1.6 billion tokens now sit on exchange books, a seven-year nadir and a 50% plunge from the peak struck in October 2025. In theory, such dwindling supply should amplify any fresh demand, but the price action suggests buyers have yet to step up in force.
On the institutional front, the signals are increasingly bullish but slow to move the needle. Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank with roughly $1.1 trillion in assets, has acquired $18 million in exposure to XRP through the Grayscale XRP Trust. The move comes as the bank’s total crypto exposure more than doubled to $235 million between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. Separately, Ripple secured a full Crypto-Asset Service Provider licence from Luxembourg’s CSSF on July 6, 2026, granting MiCA compliance across the European Economic Area. That regulatory milestone was followed by a “sell-the-news” drop, with analysts pointing to profit-taking and lingering caution over the US CLARITY Act, which missed its July 4 Senate deadline and has injected uncertainty among institutional participants.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying XRP?
Further bolstering the network’s credibility, Ripple announced a first-of-its-kind sponsorship with Kansas Athletics, placing the XRP logo on the jerseys of University of Kansas teams, including the storied Jayhawks basketball programme. CEO Brad Garlinghouse, an alumnus, helped drive the deal. Meanwhile, the XRP Ledger is gearing up for a network upgrade: version 3.2.0 has reached 89% adoption among validators on the Unique Node List, clearing the 80% activation threshold. The upgrade aims to lower node operating costs and improve stability for institutional settlements. A related security amendment, fixCleanup3_2_0, is still gathering votes and requires two consecutive weeks above 80% to become active.
On-chain activity, however, remains subdued. Daily transactions on the XRP Ledger are running at about 1.3 million, some 29% below the three-month average. That contrasts with a surge in new wallet creation: 26,000 new wallets were added in the final week of June, the highest weekly tally since March and a 40% jump from the prior week. The total number of XRP accounts has hit a record 8.42 million, with nearly 490,000 new addresses created in the first half of 2026. Tokenised real-world assets on the XRPL have swelled to roughly $4 billion in value, nearly quadruple the total assets under management in XRP spot ETFs, which themselves have logged eight consecutive weeks of net inflows totalling $1.47 billion.
Technically, XRP is treading water near its 52-week low of $1.01, set on June 26 – just 6.6% below the current price. The relative strength index sits at 42.2, signalling neither oversold nor particularly robust conditions. On the upside, resistance remains firm in the $1.15 to $1.20 range, a zone that stymied the mid-June rally to $1.13. Open interest in XRP derivatives has cooled to $2.38 billion, while on Binance the estimated leverage ratio is a low 0.158, suggesting less speculative futures activity and more spot-oriented accumulation. Analysts caution that while the shrinking exchange supply provides a cushion above $1.04, a decisive break below $1.00 would invalidate the entire recovery structure of recent weeks. Whether the mosaic of positive catalysts – from institutional entrances and regulatory wins to tightening supply – can finally push XRP through overhead resistance remains the central question for the weeks ahead.
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