XRP tracks Bitcoin with a correlation of 0.80, so with BTC stuck between $65,000 and $75,000 and dominance over 58%, XRP cannot recover regardless of its own fundamentals.
XRP whales have raked in approximately $6 billion from the $3.65 peak, while 60% of the circulating XRP supply remains at a loss, creating resistance walls of $1.44, $1.58, and $1.76 that halt any recovery attempts.
The XRP ETF’s weekly inflows collapsed from $200 million at launch to less than $2 million, and 84% of the money came from retail trading, meaning the institutional wave that was supposed to unlock commodity status has not arrived.
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XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) holders spent years waiting for the SEC case to end, for XRP ETFs to be approved and launched, and for Ripple to secure partnerships that would prove All of that has happened in the last twelve months, but somehow, the price of XRP is lower now than before it started.
Ripple is having the best year in its history as a company, but the price of XRP is down 43% so far this year and 60% from its high of $3.65. The question everyone is asking is why is XRP not going up despite its strong fundamentals. There are three specific things holding back XRP and explain why the price of XRP is stuck between $1.35 and $1.40 while Ripple continues to rack up profits.
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Andrei Gorgots / Shutterstock.com ·Andrei Gorgots / Shutterstock.com
XRP tracks Bitcoin about 80% of the time, and when it moves, it swings about 1.8 times as much in either direction. When Bitcoin fell from $74,000 to $70,000 after the Federal Reserve’s March 18 decision, XRP fell 10% in the same window, while BTC gave up around 5%. It doesn’t matter how many profits Ripple accumulates: if Bitcoin is falling, XRP falls as much or even more.
Bitcoin has been stuck between $65,000 and $75,000 since the February crash. The conflict with Iran pushed oil above $93 a barrel, the Federal Reserve kept rates between 3.5% and 3.75% and raised its 2026 inflation forecast to 2.7%, and futures markets are not pricing in a rate cut before December at the earliest. BTC briefly touched $60,000 in February and has been seesawing ever since. Bitcoin ETFs have also lost more than $3.8 billion in outflows since January, meaning institutional money is not rotating between assets but leaving cryptocurrencies entirely.
Bitcoin dominance sits at 58.6% and has remained above 58% for most of 2026. Altcoin seasons typically begin when dominance drops below 50% and capital begins to flow out of Bitcoin and into smaller assets, but that rotation has not begun. Institutions are not moving into altcoins, but rather exiting cryptocurrencies or parking what’s left in Bitcoin as the safer bet. Until Bitcoin breaks above $75,000 and holds it, XRP might have the best fundamentals in crypto and wouldn’t push the price up one bit.
Whales have been collecting steadily since XRP hit $3.65 in July 2025. Large holders are estimated to have sold $6 billion worth of Most of these whales bought below $0.65, so they make profits every time XRP starts to recover.
resistance level
Accumulated XRP
What happens
$1.44–$1.45
36.8B XRP at average cost
Breakeven selling by majority of holders
$1.58–$1.60
2B XRP
First important wall (months of departure of submarine holders)
$1.76–$1.80
1.85 billion XRP
Second wall (January rally buyers sell at breakeven)
Around 60% of the circulating supply of XRP (approximately 36.8 billion tokens) is held at a cost above the current price, according to Glassnode data from early March. The average cost base for all holders sits at around $1.44, which is almost exactly where XRP has primarily been trading. Every time the price of XRP approaches that level, holders who have been at a loss for weeks or months sell to break even and exit. And that is why $1.45 has acted as a ceiling for most of March.
Even if XRP breaks above $1.45, there is more selling pressure above it. Each price level between $1.40 and $3.65 has a group of holders waiting to break even or make profits.
The XRP ETFs were launched in November 2025 and recorded 43 consecutive days of positive inflows. The products reached 483 million dollars in December alone and 1.44 billion dollars in accumulated receipts in mid-March.
However, weekly receipts have since plummeted, from more than $200 million at launch to less than $2 million in March. The funds recorded $28 million in net outflows the same week Bitcoin ETFs took in $767 million. Total assets under management fell from a January high of $1.65 billion to about $1 billion, primarily as the price of XRP continued to fall.
About 84% of the money in the XRP ETFs comes from retail investors, and only 15.9% is linked to institutional filers on 13F disclosures. Solana ETFs, by comparison, have an institutional holding of 48.8%. Goldman Sachs owns $153.8 million in four XRP ETFs (the largest single position), but Bloomberg’s James Seyffart flagged it as likely trading desk activity rather than a long-term conviction bet. This reveals that the institutional wave that was supposed to unlock commodity status has not appeared yet.
At the current pace of $1.9 million per week, XRP ETFs would add approximately $100 million by the end of the year. That is not enough to create significant supply pressure that could move the price of XRP. Standard Chartered estimated that XRP ETFs would need between $20 million and $40 million per week in sustained inflows to begin reducing supply. Right now, ETFs are preventing XRP from falling further, but they are not giving it a reason to rise.
The three factors holding back XRP at the moment feed off each other. A rally that arises from one of the factors that works, but not the others, simply sells off, which is exactly what happened every time XRP approached $1.50 this year. For XRP price to break out of the $1.30 to $1.50 range, all three things holding XRP back must work at the same time.
The only catalyst that could trigger this is the Law of Clarity. The Senate Banking Committee is targeting a profit margin in the second half of April, and Polymarket puts the odds of approval at around 72%. If passed, XRP’s commodity status becomes permanent federal law, and such clarity would unlock greater institutional adoption. It would also give banks a reason to settle on XRP instead of defaulting on RLUSD, and that’s when the price of XRP would start to rise again.
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