XRP Price Forecast - XRP-USD Slammed to $1.50 After $3.66 Peak as ETF Outflows Bite

XRP-USD: brutal reset after the 2025 blow-off, with $1.50 now the key line in the sand

Spot XRP-USD: from $3.66 peak to $1.50–$1.66, a 55% drawdown with ETF outflows biting

XRP-USD has been taken apart over the last few months. From a 2025 high around $3.66 in July, price has collapsed to a recent intraday low near $1.50, leaving it roughly 55% below the peak and about 30% under the early-January spike above $2.40.

Into February 1, spot trades in the $1.60–$1.66 zone, having dropped more than 4% in 24 hours and over 12.5% in a week. The damage is not just on the chart; flows confirm it. Spot XRP ETFs have seen back-to-back weekly outflows of $40 million and $52 million, even though cumulative net inflows into the products still stand above $1.18 billion. That tells you there was very real institutional demand on the way up, but fast money is now de-risking aggressively into this drawdown.

The structure is cleanly bearish on the higher time-frames: price trades well below the 50-day SMA near $1.96 and the 200-day SMA around $2.46, with both moving averages now acting as dynamic resistance and sloping downward. This is textbook post-parabolic distribution, not yet a base.

Macro stress, liquidations and extreme fear: why the XRP sell-off turned violent

The XRP slide is not happening in isolation. The broader crypto complex has flipped into full risk-off mode.

• Bitcoin has broken under a key psychological zone around $80,000,

• many large-cap coins are down 50%+ from their highs,

• and the last 24-hour liquidation tally across derivatives exceeded $2.58 billion.

Within that, Ethereum accounted for roughly $1.15 billion in forced liquidations, Bitcoin for about $785 million, and XRP for over $61 million in wiped-out leveraged positions. Those numbers matter because they explain the speed and depth of the wick to $1.50 – this was not a gentle rotation; it was a margin flush.

Sentiment confirms the panic: the crypto Fear & Greed Index has collapsed to around 18, deep in “extreme fear” territory. In that regime, fundamentals get ignored and flows dominate: traders rush to de-lever, ETFs see outflows, and anything with beta – XRP included – gets oversold far beyond what the on-chain story would justify.

Trend structure on XRP-USD: break of $1.79 support, but a hammer at $1.50 and RSI near 30

Technically, you have two opposing forces on the daily chart.

First, the bearish side:

• Price has cleanly broken below $1.7920, a level that acted as multi-month support in October, November, and December.

• All key moving averages are above spot and pointing lower.

• The Supertrend indicator remains firmly red, signalling that rallies are still being sold rather than bought.

That break under $1.79 is not cosmetic; it confirms that the previous range has failed and that bears have control unless bulls reclaim that zone decisively.

On the other side, the short-term setup is no longer one-way bearish. The daily candle that tagged $1.50 printed a classic hammer: a long lower shadow with a small real body near the top of the day’s range. Combine that with a 14-day RSI around 30, and you have a market that is statistically oversold with evidence of buyers stepping in on the flush.

In practice, that points toward a likely counter-trend bounce rather than an immediate continuation straight down. A logical first magnet for such a move is a retest of the broken $1.79–$1.80 shelf – roughly 9% above current levels – which would complete a textbook “break-and-retest” of prior support turned resistance. As long as XRP-USD trades below the 50-day and the Supertrend, that rebound should be treated as a rally inside a broader downtrend, not a confirmed regime change.

**Volume spike, channel breakdown and the mid-$1.60 “beast” zone on XRP

In parallel with the price collapse, XRP has broken below the lower bound of its descending channel, pushing price into territory not seen since before the 2024 post-election rally. Every attempt at recovery has run into heavy supply at falling moving averages, which are capping upside and reinforcing the impression that rallies are opportunities for profit-taking rather than new entries.

Traders have also latched onto a symbolic detail: during the worst of the sell-off, XRP whipsawed around the mid-$1.60 region, jokingly framed as a “number of the beast” moment. There is no technical magic in that, but it captures how aggressive the dump has been and how quickly sentiment flipped from euphoria to fatalism.

What is technically relevant is the volume: turnover has exploded as price has slid. Combined with the record liquidations, that points to capitulation-type behaviour rather than a slow distribution. In other words, a lot of weak hands are being forced out at once. That can set the stage for violent short-covering rallies once selling pressure exhausts.

On-chain divergence: XRP Ledger hits 1.9 million daily payments while price bleeds

While the chart looks ugly, the XRP Ledger tells a different story. Recent data shows payments on the ledger running at almost 1.9 million transactions per day, the highest level in the network’s history. On-chain activity is not just stable; it is accelerating.

This is a textbook price–fundamental divergence. A record number of transactions and growing infrastructural usage would normally support price; instead, XRP has broken down. That gap is being driven by macro de-risking, ETF outflows, and forced liquidations, not a collapse in actual network utility.

For long-horizon investors, this divergence is important. A chain handling record throughput while the token trades at a 55% discount to its 2025 peak implies that, structurally, XRP is not in the same place it was the last time price sat in the $1.50–$1.70 band. The ledger is more used, the ETF channel is open, and the asset has a deeper institutional footprint, even if those same institutions are currently dumping exposure.

AI-driven scenario ranges for XRP-USD into late February

Multiple large language models have been used to map short-term ranges for XRP-USD into February 28, 2026. The numbers differ across models, but the structure of the scenarios is consistent and useful as an additional sentiment input:

• A base-case path where XRP stabilises and grinds higher, ending the month around $2.10–$2.25, with a single-point estimate near $2.15.

• A bearish continuation where macro risk-off persists, leaving XRP pinned in the $1.80–$1.90 zone or, in a deeper flush, sliding into the $1.25–$1.45 band that several models highlight as the next major volume area once $1.70 gives way.

• A bullish extension that would require a market-wide risk-on catalyst, pushing price back toward $2.40–$2.45, essentially re-testing the early-January spike.

Crucially, all four models converge on the same core point: a sub-$1.00 print in February is low-probability unless a genuine macro shock hits – for example, a sudden escalation in geopolitical conflict or an extreme risk-off event. Their collective bias is toward mean reversion and range-bound recovery, not an immediate reversion to the 2024 bear-market levels.

This does not mean the downside risk below $1.25 disappears; it means that, in the absence of a black swan, the current structure points more to sideways-to-up over the next few weeks than to a straight collapse.

**What the $50–$100 debate and David Schwartz’s comments actually tell you about XRP

The resurfaced comments from former Ripple CTO David Schwartz about $50–$100 XRP have reignited a familiar debate. His line – “I don’t feel comfortable saying something like that” – has been misread by some as outright dismissal of those levels. The nuance matters.

Schwartz has a track record of under-estimating what the token can do in a full mania. He bought XRP around $0.006, started selling near $0.10, and watched it continue to $0.25 afterwards. That is a gain of roughly 1,567% into his initial selling and an even larger move to the eventual spike, despite being architect-level close to the project. The lesson isn’t that $50 or $100 is “impossible”; it is that even insiders cannot time extremes, and that cautious public language from veterans usually reflects risk management, not a lack of conviction.

What matters for current positioning is not whether $XRP ever sees double-digit prices, but that bullish and bearish narratives around those levels are emotionally charged and often disconnected from the current tape. Schwartz’s caution – and the commentary from developers like Bird, who stresses the difference between probability and belief – is a reminder to treat hyper-bullish targets as long-tail possibilities, not base cases to trade off today.

Right now, with XRP-USD fighting to hold $1.50–$1.70, the gap between those moonshot numbers and reality is enormous. Herding around $50–$100 debates in this environment is a distraction from the real risk/reward at hand.

Key levels for XRP-USD: $1.50, $1.65–$1.70, $1.79–$1.90, $1.96, $2.25 and the $1 line

Putting all the data together, the current XRP battlefield can be framed around a few concrete zones:

• $1.50 – the recent low and the tail of the hammer candle. Lose this decisively and the market will start eyeing the $1.25–$1.45 pocket highlighted by multiple models as the next high-volume support.

• $1.65–$1.70 – near-term support flagged by scenario exercises as the line that bulls need to defend in early February to avoid that slide toward $1.45.

• $1.79–$1.90 – former multi-month floor and now the most important resistance band. A rebound into this area is likely; a daily close back above it would be the first real sign that bears are losing control.

• $1.96 (50-day SMA) – the first structural moving-average barrier. Reclaiming this level would start to neutralise the downtrend and shift the discussion from “dead-cat bounce” to “possible base-building”.

• $2.10–$2.25 – the cluster where several AI-driven scenarios see month-end value. If price can re-enter and hold this band, it will confirm that the hammer at $1.50 marked a durable low for this leg.

• $1.00 – the psychological floor everyone is watching. The consensus from multiple quantitative and AI views is that, barring a shock, February is more likely to be spent above this line. But if the macro backdrop worsens sharply – for example, escalation in conflict or another leg down in Bitcoin – the market will start stress-testing that assumption very fast.

These levels give you a concrete trading framework instead of vague optimism or fear.

Short-term stance on XRP: structurally fragile, but a high-risk speculative buy for patient money

Putting aside the noise, the current picture on XRP-USD is clear:

• The trend is still down: price is below all major moving averages, prior support at $1.79 has failed, and ETF flows are negative in the short term.

• Momentum is stretched: RSI near 30, a clear hammer at $1.50, and extreme fear suggest forced selling and capitulation rather than an orderly distribution.

• Fundamentals and on-chain data have improved, not deteriorated: the XRP Ledger is clearing about 1.9 million payments per day, an all-time high, even while price sits at fourteen-month lows.

• Risk factors are macro rather than project-specific: geopolitical tension, ETF outflows, and broad crypto deleveraging are driving this leg lower, not a collapse in XRP’s transactional role.

On that basis, from a pure risk/reward standpoint, XRP at $1.50–$1.70 looks like a speculative Buy for investors who:

• fully accept the possibility of another 20–30% drawdown into the $1.25 area if support fails,

• are willing to hold through high intraday volatility and further ETF-driven outflows, and

• are positioning for a medium-term recovery back toward the $2.10–$2.25 band and, if the macro backdrop stabilises, a retest of the $2.40–$2.45 region.

For traders with tight risk limits or low tolerance for drawdowns, XRP at this stage is not a safe Hold; it is either a high-beta trading vehicle or a position you avoid until the chart prints a base above $1.79 and reclaims the 50-day SMA.

Bottom line: directionally, the tape is still bearish, but the price already reflects a capitulation-type reset while the network is printing record usage. That mismatch is exactly where asymmetric, but very risky, entries tend to emerge.

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