XRP Price Forecast – XRP-USD Defends $2.03 Support As ETF Flows And EU Licence Eye $2.35

XRP-USD Price: ETF Flows, Licences And A Compressed $2 Range

XRP-USD Spot Structure Around $2.00–$2.40

XRP-USD is trading near $2.05–$2.06, about 15% below the early-January spike to roughly $2.42 and around 22% lower than a year ago, when it traded close to $2.68. Price bounced from the $1.80 demand band, ran into the $2.40 supply zone and stalled exactly where the declining 100-day moving average overlaps that resistance, still well below the 200-day moving average near $2.56. That rejection shifted the market from impulsive rebound to a corrective phase rather than a confirmed new uptrend. The key pivot on the daily chart is now the $2.00 area. Holding above $2 keeps a sequence of higher lows intact and preserves the chance of another test of $2.40 and later the 200-day average. A daily close back under roughly $2.00 would confirm that sellers are regaining control and raise the odds of a deeper move back toward the $1.80 base of the last rally.

Short-Term XRP-USD Technical Signals At $2.03–$2.35

On the four-hour chart, XRP-USD has formed a clear double bottom around $2.03–$2.04, with a neckline near $2.188. Price has broken below the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the $2.41–$2.03 drop and sits under the 7-day simple moving average (around $2.09) and the 20-day SMA (around $2.08), but still trades above the 50-day SMA near $2.01. The 200-day SMA up at roughly $2.56 marks the upper boundary of the current structure. Volatility is moderate: the daily ATR is about $0.10, implying natural swings of roughly 5% per day. Momentum gauges are neutral to mildly constructive. RSI is parked around 50.0, showing no extreme. The MACD histogram is effectively flat near 0.0000, signalling compressed momentum that can break either way. Short-term Stochastic readings around %K ≈ 8 and %D ≈ 7 indicate that on intraday horizons the market is already close to oversold. Bollinger Bands put the lower band near $1.84, the upper band around $2.32, and the mid-band near $2.08. XRP-USD trades around 0.46 inside the band range, closer to the lower edge than the upper, leaving room for a push toward $2.32 if buyers can reclaim the middle band. The immediate resistance sequence is $2.08, then $2.20, then $2.32–$2.35. Below, the critical levels are the $2.04–$2.03 double-bottom floor and then the $1.9127 Fibonacci area and $1.80 structural demand. A sustained break above $2.08 with RSI moving above 55, MACD turning clearly positive and volume stepping above roughly $67 million per day would confirm an attempt to resolve the range upward toward $2.20–$2.35. A clean daily close below $2.03 would invalidate the double bottom and reopen the path to the lower Bollinger band near $1.84 and potentially the $1.80 base.

ETF Inflows Into XRP-USD And The New Demand Channel

Exchange-traded funds are now a material part of the XRP-USD story. Spot XRP products listed on regulated exchanges have accumulated about $1.52 billion in assets, equal to roughly 1.2% of XRP’s market capitalisation around $125 billion, with price near $2.05. That implies around 800 million XRP effectively locked inside ETF structures. Weekly flows are accelerating. In the latest week, spot XRP funds added about $56 million, up from $38 million the previous week, a 47% jump. Since launch, net inflows over the first two months have reached roughly $1.4 billion. One major bank analyst projects that first-year spot ETF demand could reach $4–8 billion if momentum holds. Even at the current 1.2% of market cap, XRP remains far behind Bitcoin, where spot ETFs hold about 6.5% of supply, and Ethereum, where funds contain around 5.4%. That gap shows both the upside optionality if institutional adoption broadens and the reality that XRP is still a second-tier allocation for large portfolios compared with BTC and ETH.

Regulation, EMI Licences And XRP-USD’s Institutional Pitch

On the regulatory front, XRP has moved from defensive posture to proactive licensing. Ripple has secured a banking charter from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and has also obtained key approvals in Europe, including authorisation from the United Kingdom and preliminary clearance for an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence in Luxembourg. The Luxembourg decision alone triggered an immediate price reaction of about 4% on the day, signalling how sensitive traders are to regulatory milestones. Once fully approved, an EMI licence in Luxembourg allows Ripple to passport regulated payment services across all 27 EU member states under a unified framework. That upgrades XRP’s narrative from a purely speculative token to infrastructure for licensed digital payments in one of the largest economic blocs. For banks, PSPs and fintechs that must operate inside strict compliance regimes, this kind of licence is not cosmetic; it is often a precondition before they can integrate an asset into cross-border payment flows or treasury operations.

Cross-Border Thesis For XRP-USD Versus Stablecoin Reality

The long-running fundamental story behind XRP-USD is its role as native token of the XRP Ledger, which is optimised for fast, low-fee cross-border and cross-currency transfers. Traditional flows still move through the SWIFT messaging network, which routes more than $150 trillion in transactions per year with settlement often taking three to five days and involving multiple intermediaries. Ripple’s management has argued that XRP could eventually handle up to 14% of that flow, more than $20 trillion annually, if banks and remitters shift aggressively to blockchain rails. That scale of adoption would obviously be transformational for demand. The problem is the volatility. Corporates and banks do not like balance sheet risk in the settlement asset when stablecoins exist that are pegged to fiat currencies. Even though XRP settlement is near-instant with negligible fees, the argument for using a volatile token where a stable unit is available remains weak. Ripple launched its own stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), in December 2024 to close that gap, but so far it has not been a game-changer. XRP on-chain transactions have actually drifted lower over the past year instead of exploding higher. That divergence between the grand cross-border narrative and the actual usage data is the main structural bear point in the fundamental story.

XRP-USD, Spot ETFs And Institutional Appetite Versus Bitcoin

Spot ETFs are meant to open XRP-USD to the same class of investors who embraced Bitcoin vehicles. Retail can now get XRP exposure through brokerage accounts rather than crypto exchanges, and institutional allocators no longer need direct custody. Fee levels are competitive: one leading XRP ETF charges around 0.19%, significantly below the effective spreads and fees retail would pay buying XRP under $50,000 per trade on a typical crypto platform. Even so, behaviour so far shows that institutions still prioritise BTC. XRP spot ETFs took roughly two months to accumulate $1.4 billion in net inflows. The equivalent threshold in Bitcoin funds was crossed in less than one month. A global pool of institutional assets under management of about $147 trillion has room to move XRP much higher if even a small slice is allocated to these vehicles, but the first waves of capital continue to favour Bitcoin as the primary macro crypto bet.

DeFi, FXRP And Yield Demand Around XRP-USD

Beyond centralised products, there is a slow build-out of yield-oriented structures tied to XRP-USD. On the Flare network, the FXRP synthetic version of XRP has attracted more than $150 million in total value locked. That shows that some holders are willing to bridge into DeFi ecosystems to earn yield or take leverage rather than just sit passively. In parallel, Evernorth has been accumulating “millions” of XRP tokens with plans to go public via a SPAC merger. Once listed, the company intends to deploy additional capital into XRP and generate returns through regulated DeFi strategies, including validator participation on the XRP Ledger. If that business model scales, it adds another steady demand channel, as Evernorth would likely need to top up XRP holdings to sustain yield products. These flows are still small compared with the $125 billion market cap but they are directionally supportive.

XRP Versus Bitcoin: Structural Underperformance

On the XRP/BTC cross, the story is less flattering for XRP. The ratio recently ran into a heavy resistance band around 2,400–2,500 satoshis, a zone that aligns with the 200-day moving average and a prior distribution area. The attempted breakout failed, and the pair has rotated back down to roughly 2,150 sats with daily RSI rolling over from a local peak. Behaviour is classic for a continuing downtrend: rallies into the key moving averages attract supply, and relative performance bleeds back in Bitcoin’s favour. The next important support lies near 2,000 sats. Only a sustained recovery above the 2,400 sats region, coupled with a break and hold above those daily moving averages, would signal that relative strength is shifting meaningfully back toward XRP. Until that happens, an investor holding XRP-USD instead of BTC-USD is taking the bet that regulatory, ETF and cross-border catalysts will eventually compensate for current underperformance.

Medium-Term Scenarios For XRP-USD To 2028

On the long-dated horizon, one high-profile bank strategist projects XRP-USD at $12.50 by 2028, roughly 500% above the current $2.08 area. The rationale is a combination of regulatory clarity, ETF-driven inflows, and growing use of the XRP Ledger in cross-border and cross-currency payment flows. If you back-solve that target, it requires a sustained annualised appreciation in the high double digits over about three years. For that to be credible, several things have to happen simultaneously. First, spot XRP ETFs must close part of the gap versus BTC and ETH, moving from about 1.2% to several percent of circulating supply locked in funds, which implies multi-billion-dollar fresh inflows on top of the current $1.52 billion. Second, Ripple’s EMI licence and US banking charter need to translate into visible deals with European and American financial institutions, with measurable settlement volumes rather than only pilots. Third, the payment ecosystem must accommodate XRP alongside or in competition with large stablecoins, something that is not visible in the transaction data yet. Without those shifts, the 12.50 call remains an optimistic, ETF-and-narrative-driven path rather than a base case.

Risk Map For XRP-USD: Critical Prices And What They Signal

The current structure for XRP-USD is defined by a narrow set of levels. On the upside, $2.08 is the first line; it is the 20-day SMA and the Bollinger mid-band. Above that, the market needs to absorb supply at $2.20, then attack the $2.32–$2.35 resistance cluster, which aligns with the upper Bollinger band and short-term breakout projections. Clearing $2.40 again and pushing into the $2.56 200-day moving average would be the first genuine signal that the longer-term bearish structure is being neutralised. On the downside, the immediate failure point is the $2.04–$2.03 double-bottom floor. Losing that zone turns the pattern from constructive base into failed reversal and points toward the $1.9127 Fibonacci area and the prior $1.80 demand zone. If $1.80 breaks, the narrative shifts from “consolidation after a strong leg higher” to “complete unwind of the December-January move.” Daily volatility around $0.10 means these bands can be tested quickly; position sizing has to respect that range.

Verdict On XRP-USD – Buy, Sell Or Hold?

Taken together, XRP-USD is a leveraged bet on three pillars: the success of XRP-backed payment infrastructure, the growth of spot XRP ETFs from $1.52 billion in assets toward something closer to the 6.5% supply share seen in Bitcoin funds, and the monetisation of new regulatory licences in the US, UK and EU. Technically, price is compressing around $2.05 with a visible double bottom at $2.03, resistance stacked between $2.20 and $2.40, and structural support back at $1.80. Fundamentally, licence wins, ETF inflows and early DeFi traction on platforms like FXRP and Evernorth are all constructive, but they coexist with sluggish on-chain transaction growth and continued underperformance versus BTC-USD, where the XRP/BTC pair is still capped under 2,400–2,500 sats. On that balance, the stance is speculative Buy rather than core allocation. Above $2.08 and especially if $2.35–$2.40 is cleared, the risk-reward improves sharply, with scope for a move into the mid-$2s and a repricing of ETF and licence optionality. A decisive break below $2.03 that drives price toward $1.80 would invalidate the current constructive setup and downgrade XRP-USD back to high-risk Hold at best.

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