XRP Breaks Below $1.35 Support After 71.8% August Run From $0.988 to $1.698

XRP traded $1.3179 on Wednesday, September 2, with a market capitalization of $82.69 billion and a global rank of fifth. The token set a post-peak low near $1.32 during the week and has spent the session grinding along it. Tuesday's price sat at $1.3665 after a 0.96% decline, with prints between $1.34 and $1.39 across the September 1 session.

The seven-day picture is a straight give-back. XRP is down 6.01% over the past week while remaining up 22.56% over the past thirty days. That gap tells you everything about when the gains arrived and how quickly they are being surrendered.

August was exceptional. XRP climbed 28.5% on a monthly close basis — its best August since 2021 and a break from a month it has lost six times in nine years. The intramonth move was larger still: a 71.8% advance from $0.988 to $1.698, with almost all the fuel arriving in the final two weeks.

That rally failed near $1.70 and has not been retested since.

From $1.698 to $1.3179 is a 22.4% drawdown in under two weeks. From the $0.988 August low, current price still holds a 33.4% gain, which means the correction has retraced roughly a third of the advance without breaking it.

The thesis of this forecast is that XRP has the cleanest supply-versus-demand setup in large-cap crypto right now, and the arithmetic currently favours supply. US spot XRP ETFs took in $110.49 million during the week ending August 28 — the strongest weekly total of 2026 and the first week above $100 million since early December 2025 — and added another $14.38 million on September 1. On the same day, Ripple released 1 billion XRP from escrow and re-locked 700 million, leaving 300 million tokens worth roughly $405 million available to a company that has not shown them entering the public market.

That is $405 million of potential supply against $14.38 million of confirmed daily demand.

The ETF bid is real, it is accelerating, and it is a floor rather than a launchpad. The $1.35 to $1.38 zone is where that gets tested.

The August Rally Ran 71.8% And Then Stopped Dead

Understanding the current level requires understanding how the token got here, because the shape of the advance explains the shape of the retreat.

XRP rallied 71.8% from $0.988 to $1.698 during August, with a confirmed technical breakout flagged as the move developed. The monthly gain measured 28.5% on a close-to-close basis — the divergence between the two figures reflects how much of the move happened intramonth and how much was already given back before the month ended.

Almost all of the fuel arrived in the final two weeks. That compression matters. A move that takes 45% of its distance in ten sessions leaves an enormous cost-basis cluster directly beneath the highs, and every one of those buyers is now underwater.

The failure point was $1.698. Since then, XRP has worked its way lower inside a daily descending channel. Selling volume through the pullback has remained well below the levels recorded during the advance, which means the retreat lacks the force of a high-volume breakdown. That is a genuinely constructive detail — distribution on low volume is drift, not liquidation.

Broader crypto ran the same pattern. Bitcoin advanced roughly 25% in August to a peak of $81,255 and now trades $77,118.98, down 1.80% on the day and 5.1% off its high. Ethereum gained 33.50% on the month to a $2,545.88 peak and trades near $2,372, 6.8% below it.

XRP's 22.4% drawdown from peak is the deepest of the three. That is consistent with its position on the risk curve — higher beta on the way up, higher beta on the way down.

The seasonal argument is the one bulls should treat carefully. XRP has historically lost value in September and has a poor record in the month generally. August broke a nine-year pattern of weakness; September may restore the more familiar one.

The specific historical rhyme is that when XRP posts an outsized August, the following month has frequently handed a portion of it back. Nothing in the current tape contradicts that.

The Descending Triangle And The $1.35 To $1.38 Wall

The chart structure is unusually well-defined for a crypto asset, and it has a clear break level in each direction.

XRP has formed a descending triangle since the August rally from roughly $1.00 to $1.70. The pattern's flat base sits at the $1.35 to $1.38 support zone, with declining highs compressing price toward it. Triangle resistance sits near $1.55.

The base is the important part. Approximately 3.2 billion XRP were previously traded in the $1.35 to $1.38 range, making it one of the most significant demand zones on the entire chart. Three point two billion tokens at $1.36 represents roughly $4.35 billion of transacted value concentrated inside three cents of price.

That volume shelf is what a support level actually is — a price where a large population of holders established cost basis and where sellers historically ran out.

XRP at $1.3179 sits beneath it. The token has broken the floor of its own triangle intraday and has not confirmed the break on a daily close.

The resistance sequence above runs $1.35 (+2.44%), $1.38 (+4.71%), $1.55 (triangle resistance, +17.61%), $1.60 (+21.41%), $1.68 (+27.48%) and $1.86 (+41.13%). A move above $1.86 brings $2.00 (+51.76%) and $2.19 (+66.15%) into range, but the current chart has not confirmed any of it.

The downside sequence is shorter and closer. Losing the $1.35 support zone on a daily close confirms the descending triangle breaks lower rather than higher, which targets $1.20 — an 8.94% decline from current price. Below that, the 50-day exponential moving average at $1.2112 sits 8.10% down, and modelled downside extends to $1.1836 at 10.19%.

The measured move from a descending triangle of this height would carry considerably further than $1.20 if volume confirmed it. So far volume has not.

The single question the next few sessions answer: does $1.35 get reclaimed, or does it become resistance?

Momentum Is Neutral And The Trend Indicators Are Split

The oscillator picture offers no directional edge, which is itself the message.

The 14-day Relative Strength Index reads 55.57 — a neutral reading suggesting the market may be waiting for a catalyst before committing to direction. That is above the 50 midpoint, which means the daily trend has not broken, but it is far from the overbought territory the August advance produced.

Broader sentiment has run ahead of the tape. The Fear and Greed Index registered 62, in Greed territory, at a recent reading. Sentiment at Greed with price at a post-peak low is the configuration that typically resolves through either a sharp sentiment reset or a price recovery — it rarely persists.

Over the last thirty days XRP has produced 13 green days out of 30, a 43% hit rate, with 16.43% price volatility. That is a market rising on fewer up days than down days — the signature of a move driven by a handful of large advances rather than steady accumulation.

The moving averages are constructive. XRP remains above its 20-day exponential moving average at $1.3055 and comfortably above its 50-day EMA at $1.2112. At $1.3179, the token sits 0.94% above the 20-day and 8.10% above the 50-day. Both averages rising with price above them describes an intact intermediate uptrend.

The Parabolic SAR is the bearish counterweight. It remains above price at $1.6852, showing that sellers still control the short-term trend. That indicator flips only on a substantial recovery, and $1.6852 sits 27.87% above current price — effectively a full retest of the August high.

Derivatives activity has been quiet. Liquidations on September 1 exceeded $2.3 million, led by short positions, which is a fraction of the size seen in Bitcoin and Ethereum on the same day. XRP's positioning divergence score reads 2.7, indicating no meaningful gap between top traders and average accounts — the opposite of Bitcoin's 21.2, where professionals hold 111 points more long exposure than retail.

XRP is not a crowded trade in either direction. That reduces cascade risk and removes squeeze fuel simultaneously.

Ripple Unlocked 1 Billion And Put 700 Million Straight Back

The supply event of the month landed on September 1, and the net figure is far smaller than the headline.

Ripple released 1 billion XRP from escrow through three separate transactions of 500 million, 400 million and 100 million tokens. At a price near $1.38, the unlocked tokens carried a nominal value of roughly $1.38 billion.

Ripple then returned 700 million XRP to escrow.

The net supply addition is 300 million tokens — roughly $405 million of nominal value at $1.35, and 0.3% of the 100 billion maximum supply.

The mechanism has run unchanged since December 2017, when Ripple placed 55 billion XRP into time-based escrow contracts on the XRP Ledger. The protocol automatically releases up to 1 billion XRP on the first day of each month, making the tokens available to Ripple-controlled accounts without any additional action from the company. Unused tokens can be placed into new escrows with later release dates.

The historical re-lock rate has run between 60% and 80%, typically returning 600 million to 800 million XRP after each release. December 2025 saw approximately 70% returned. September's 700 million is precisely in line with that pattern.

The critical distinction the market repeatedly gets wrong: an unlock is not a sale. It makes tokens available to Ripple. It does not confirm any intent to sell them. The $14.38 million of ETF inflows recorded on September 1 cannot be measured directly against the roughly $405 million nominal value of the 300 million tokens remaining outside escrow — one figure represents capital that actually entered funds during a trading day, the other represents company-controlled inventory that has not been shown entering the public market.

Watching on-chain flows from Ripple's known wallet addresses to exchange deposit addresses in the days ahead provides the clearest signal of actual sell intent. Absent those transfers, the unlock is an accounting event.

For long-term holders, a monthly unlock that gets largely re-escrowed changes very little. For traders positioned around the $1.55 breakout level, it is the short-term risk factor worth monitoring most closely.

The next scheduled release arrives October 1.

31.28 Billion Still Locked And Eight Years To Clear It

The structural supply overhang is the permanent feature of XRP that separates it from Bitcoin and Ethereum, and its scale deserves precise framing.

After the September 1 release, approximately 31.28 billion XRP remained locked in Ripple's on-ledger escrow — 31.28% of the 100 billion maximum supply. That figure comes from reading the ledger's escrow records directly rather than from an estimate. Escrow holdings fell from about 32.28 billion tokens to 31.28 billion across the release.

Nearly one third of the total supply sits under company control on a predetermined release schedule.

Based on the pace at which tokens are actually entering circulation, the full escrow balance could take eight or more years to clear — pointing to a slow, gradual release rather than a sudden flood.

The annualized arithmetic is what matters for price. At 200 million to 400 million tokens of net monthly supply after re-escrow, XRP absorbs roughly 2.4 billion to 4.8 billion new tokens per year. At current prices, that translates to approximately $2.5 billion to $5.1 billion of structural supply arriving every year whether anyone wants it or not.

Against that, the entire seven-fund US spot XRP ETF complex holds 977.92 million XRP with $1.064 billion in assets, accumulated since the first launch in September 2025 and the main wave in November. Combined net assets reached $1.44 billion after the September 1 session, with cumulative net inflows of approximately $1.68 billion.

Set the two numbers side by side. Eighteen months of cumulative ETF accumulation totals $1.68 billion. Annual structural escrow supply runs $2.5 billion to $5.1 billion.

The wrappers are not yet absorbing the issuance. That is the fundamental reason XRP has struggled to sustain breakouts even during periods of genuinely strong institutional flow, and it explains why a 71.8% August rally reversed 22.4% within two weeks.

The right way to frame ETF inflows here is as a floor, not a launchpad. They cushion drawdowns. They have not yet cleared the overhang.

$110.49 Million In A Week Was The Best Of 2026

The demand side accelerated meaningfully in late August, and the numbers are worth stating precisely because they represent a genuine regime shift.

US spot XRP ETFs recorded $110.49 million in net inflows during the week ending August 28 — the strongest weekly total of the year and the first time weekly inflows crossed $100 million since the week ending December 5, 2025. That is a nine-month gap between $100 million weeks, broken in the same window XRP ran 71.8%.

Earlier weekly figures had run near $105 million, and cumulative inflows crossed $1.66 billion during that stretch, with net assets reaching $1.44 billion across all funds.

On September 1, the complex added $14.38 million. Franklin's XRPZ led the session at $6.63 million, followed by Grayscale's GXRP at $4.72 million. Cumulative net inflows reached approximately $1.68 billion.

The composition is the interesting part. Newer, lower-fee products captured the flow while the legacy vehicles did not lead. That mirrors what has happened in the Ethereum complex, where staking-enabled and low-fee products absorbed capital while the converted trust bled.

The regulated funds continued attracting capital during XRP's correction. That is the single most important behavioural data point in this forecast. Price fell 6.01% over seven days and the ETF complex did not flip to redemptions once.

Compare that to Bitcoin on the same day. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $236.46 million in net outflows on September 1 — the largest daily withdrawal since July 31 — with a single issuer accounting for $201.18 million, or 85% of the total. Spot Ethereum ETFs took in $10.95 million, extending a twelve-day streak.

Capital did not exit crypto on September 1. It exited Bitcoin specifically and rotated into the smaller-cap wrappers.

XRP taking $14.38 million against Ethereum's $10.95 million on the same session, with roughly a quarter of Ethereum's market capitalization, is a disproportionate share of the day's allocation.

Institutions Are Buying The Wrapper, Not The Token

The ownership data from second-quarter 13F filings gives the clearest available read on who is behind these flows.

The largest reporting institutional holder carried approximately $87.45 million of XRP ETF exposure, having added more than 83 million XRP over the quarter. Two large quantitative and multi-strategy firms followed with smaller but still growing positions.

Adding 83 million tokens in a single quarter through a regulated wrapper is a meaningful allocation decision, not a trading position. It also tells you the buyer is accessing XRP through the ETF specifically rather than through spot markets or custody — which is exactly the structural shift these products were built to enable.

The seven-fund complex accumulating 977.92 million XRP since September 2025 represents roughly 1.56% of the circulating supply. That is a modest but rapidly growing float lock-up, and it compounds if inflows sustain at the recent pace.

The distinction between wrapper demand and token demand matters for how the price behaves. ETF creations require the fund to buy spot XRP, which is real market demand. But that demand arrives in a predictable, size-limited, business-hours pattern that market makers can front-run and hedge, which dampens its price impact relative to an equivalent amount of retail spot buying.

Long-term holders who accumulated in earlier cycles have been trimming into any strength. Retail speculative flow thinned after the early-2026 rally, visible in lower daily turnover.

So the structure is: ETF complex absorbing supply on one side, while escrow unlocks, profit-taking and a break-even sell wall add it back on the other. The net result has been a price that grinds sideways and then lower despite steady wrapper demand.

The flows are real. They are not yet big enough to clear the overhang. That framing has held for most of 2026 and it explains why $110.49 million in a single week produced a rally that lasted two weeks rather than two months.

The March Buyers Waited Five Months And Sold At Breakeven

The on-chain behaviour during August's advance explains where the supply came from, and it is a textbook pattern.

The wallets that sold into the rally had held since around March, when XRP traded close to today's price. Those positions were roughly 23% underwater by the end of June. They waited five months and exited the moment the rally carried them back to level.

That is break-even selling — the most predictable form of supply in any market. It has nothing to do with valuation, catalysts or fundamentals. It is the behaviour of holders who decided during the drawdown that they would exit at cost and executed the plan when price allowed.

The implication for the current level is direct. XRP at $1.3179 is back at roughly the same price those March holders bought and sold at. The break-even wall has largely cleared at this level, which removes one persistent source of supply.

The new supply source is the opposite cohort. Buyers who entered during the final two weeks of August — when almost all the rally's fuel arrived — established cost basis between $1.40 and $1.70. Those positions are now 6% to 22% underwater, and they become the next break-even sell wall on any recovery toward $1.55.

The token gained nearly 70% during its August advance, giving recent buyers a substantial profit cushion at the peak and creating one plausible source of the selling that followed.

September will show whether the new buyers are early or simply the last ones in.

Derivatives offer little additional insight because positioning is genuinely balanced. Liquidations on September 1 exceeded $2.3 million, led by shorts, and the positioning divergence score of 2.7 indicates no gap between sophisticated and retail exposure. There is no crowded position to unwind and no trapped leverage to flush.

That balance is why the pullback has been orderly rather than violent, and why selling volume has stayed well below the levels recorded during the advance.

XRP Is Trading The Fed, Same As Everything Else

The macro overlay currently dominates every token-specific factor, and it is pointed the wrong way.

The 10-year Treasury yield advanced for a sixth consecutive session to 4.814%, its highest since late 2023. The 30-year sits at 5.27%. The 2-year reached 4.369%, a 19-month high. CME FedWatch odds of a 25-basis-point September hike stand near 70% for the September 15-16 FOMC, up from roughly 35% before Chairman Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole remarks on August 28.

Warsh told the market the Fed's preferred inflation gauge sits at 3.7%, nearly double target, and that the central bank would have work to do without clearer evidence of improvement.

Crypto has traded as pure equity beta through the repricing. Ethereum currently shows an 86.8% 24-hour correlation to the S&P 500. Bitcoin fell 1.80% on Wednesday. XRP is down 6.01% on the week. None of those moves reflect anything happening on their respective networks.

Wednesday's data reinforced the problem. ADP private payrolls printed 38,000 against a 47,000 consensus — the slowest month since January, with manufacturing shedding 17,000 jobs and professional and business services losing 16,000. Under the reaction function that governed prior cycles, that hands crypto an immediate bid. It produced nothing.

Brent crude ran as high as $96.59 on escalating US-Iran hostilities, pushing one-year inflation expectations from below 2% to 2.5% in two weeks and making a September hike more likely rather than less.

The calendar from here: US nonfarm payrolls Friday with a +53,000 consensus after July's -23,000, August CPI on September 11, and the FOMC decision on September 16.

For XRP specifically, the macro sensitivity is compounded by low institutional conviction. A token with a positioning divergence score of 2.7 has no sophisticated base defending it during a risk-off move. It falls with the complex and rises with it.

That is why $1.35 matters more than any Ripple announcement between now and mid-September.

Where The Forecasts Sit And Where They Disagree

The modelled outlooks for XRP span a wide band, and the dispersion tracks the same supply-versus-demand question.

Near-term modelling projects a September 2 trading range of $1.2795 to $1.3650 with an average target of $1.3222, and a September 3 range of $1.2856 to $1.3715 averaging $1.3286. The one-month forecast points to an average of $1.3526, a 2.63% gain, with a projected range of $1.1836 to $1.5217.

The technical framework is cleaner. XRP targets $1.68 if it breaks above $1.55, with $1.86 as the key breakout point beyond that. A close below $1.35 sends price toward $1.20.

Year-end 2026 projections cluster in two camps. One framework forecasts $1.48 to $2.10 with a base-case target of $1.75. Another projects $1.53 to $1.62 with a peak of $1.62 by year-end unless a broad market downturn hits. A third places the 2026 range between $1.08 and $2.06 with an average around $1.57.

The gap between a $1.62 ceiling and a $2.10 upper bound for the same date is a 30% spread, and it maps directly onto whether ETF inflows sustain above $100 million weekly.

Longer-horizon work puts XRP between $2.51 and $6.04 by 2030, with the most aggressive projections reaching $16 to $43 by 2040 under bullish scenarios.

The catalysts that would resolve the near-term dispersion are identifiable. On the constructive side: continued ETF inflows above $100 million weekly, a re-escrow rate at the high end of the 60% to 80% band in October, no Ripple transfers to exchange deposit addresses, and a dovish September FOMC. On the destructive side: a payrolls print confirming the hike, Ripple moving the 300 million unescrowed tokens to exchanges, and a daily close below $1.35 confirming the descending triangle break.

The base case sits between the two: a token supported by genuine and accelerating institutional demand, capped by $2.5 billion to $5.1 billion of annual structural supply that demand has not yet grown large enough to absorb.

What Would Actually Break XRP Out Of This Range

The bull case requires two things to happen together, and only one of them is currently in place.

The first is sustained ETF absorption. Weekly inflows crossing $100 million for the first time since December 2025 is the signal that matters — not the single-day $14.38 million prints, which are too small to move a $82.69 billion asset. If the complex can hold $100 million-plus weeks through September and October, annualized wrapper demand reaches $5.2 billion, which for the first time matches the upper bound of annual escrow supply.

That is the crossover point. Above it, the ETF complex clears the overhang and the structural bid becomes price-setting rather than price-cushioning.

The second is escrow discipline. Ripple re-locking 700 million in September was in line with history. If the October release sees 800 million returned, net supply drops to 200 million tokens — roughly $270 million monthly, or $3.2 billion annualized. Paired with $5.2 billion of ETF demand, the balance flips positive for the first time.

Neither condition alone is sufficient. Both together produce the break through $1.55, $1.60 and $1.68, and open the $1.86 level that unlocks $2.00 and $2.19.

Against that, the immediate obstacles are concrete. XRP sits below the $1.35 to $1.38 zone where 3.2 billion tokens established cost basis. The Parabolic SAR sits 27.87% overhead at $1.6852. The Fed is 70% priced to hike on September 16. A cohort of buyers who entered between $1.40 and $1.70 in late August forms a fresh break-even wall on any recovery.

Selling volume staying well below the levels recorded during the advance is the strongest technical argument the bulls have. Low-volume drift resolves upward more often than it accelerates downward, and the 20-day EMA at $1.3055 has not been lost.

The scheduled unlock on October 1 is the next supply event. Between now and then, the market gets Friday's payrolls, September 11 CPI and the September 16 FOMC.

XRP Price Forecast: Levels Into The September FOMC

XRP trades $1.3179 with an $82.69 billion market capitalization, down 6.01% on the week and up 22.56% on the month, after setting a post-peak low near $1.32 and failing at $1.698 in August. RSI reads 55.57, the 20-day EMA sits at $1.3055 and the 50-day at $1.2112, with Parabolic SAR overhead at $1.6852.

The near-term bias is neutral with a downward tilt. The token sits below the $1.35 to $1.38 zone where 3.2 billion XRP previously changed hands, the descending triangle from the August rally has been breached intraday without a confirming daily close, and September Fed hike odds near 70% are pressuring the entire risk complex. Ripple's September 1 release left 300 million tokens worth roughly $405 million outside escrow after 700 million were re-locked, against $14.38 million of confirmed daily ETF demand.

The offsetting case is genuine. US spot XRP ETFs took $110.49 million in the week ending August 28, the best week of 2026 and the first above $100 million since early December 2025, with cumulative net inflows reaching $1.68 billion and net assets at $1.44 billion. The complex kept buying through the entire correction. Selling volume has stayed well below the advance. Positioning is balanced with a divergence score of 2.7 and negligible trapped leverage.

Downside targets: $1.3055 (20-day EMA, -0.94%), $1.2795 (-2.91%), $1.2112 (50-day EMA, -8.10%), $1.20 (-8.94%) and $1.1836 (-10.19%). Losing $1.20 opens the gap toward the $0.988 August base, 25.03% lower.

Upside targets: $1.35 (+2.44%), $1.38 (+4.71%), $1.55 (triangle resistance, +17.61%), $1.60 (+21.41%), $1.68 (+27.48%), $1.75 (base case, +32.78%), $1.86 (+41.13%), $2.00 (+51.76%) and $2.19 (+66.15%).

The base case into the September 15-16 FOMC is a $1.20 to $1.55 range with the burden of proof on the bulls. Friday's payrolls sets the direction for the whole complex, and the October 1 escrow release is the next token-specific supply event.

The verdict is constructive structurally and cautious tactically. The ETF bid is accelerating and is now the closest it has been to matching annual escrow issuance. That crossover, when it arrives, is what re-rates XRP. It has not arrived. Reclaim $1.38 and the August structure survives intact. Close below $1.35 and the triangle confirms lower, with $1.20 the destination.

That's TradingNEWS