Goldman Sachs Dumps $154M XRP Stake While ETF Inflows and RLUSD Surge Offer Little Price Boost

Goldman Sachs exits $154M XRP ETF position, but spot ETFs still draw fresh inflows. XRP price languishes at $1.09, down 42% YTD, despite Ripple's ecosystem expansion.

Institutional money is sending mixed signals around XRP. On one side, Goldman Sachs has completely exited its hefty XRP ETF position. On the other, spot ETFs continue to draw fresh capital. Caught in the middle, the token itself is barely clinging to $1.09 — down 42% since the start of the year and a staggering 70% below the 52-week high of $3.65 set in July 2025.

The Wall Street giant dissolved its entire XRP-related ETF holdings in the first quarter of 2026, offloading shares worth roughly $154 million that it held at the end of last year. Analysts view the move as a tactical pivot rather than a bearish call on the asset class: Goldman redirected the proceeds into crypto equities such as Coinbase and Galaxy Digital, suggesting the bank used the XRP position primarily to facilitate client orders rather than as a long-term bet.

Yet while one whale cashed out, a steady stream of institutional money continues to flow into XRP ETFs. On July 2, U.S. spot products recorded net inflows of $6.55 million, all of it flowing into Bitwise’s XRP fund. The asset base under management across all such funds now stands at $988 million, with cumulative inflows since launch reaching nearly $1.5 billion. Weekly figures show inflows of around $60 million, confirming that broader investor appetite remains intact — even if it has moderated from the late-2025 peak.

Ripple itself is forging ahead on multiple fronts. The company recently joined the Open USD Consortium, a stablecoin initiative backed by Visa, Mastercard, and BlackRock that plans to launch a dollar-pegged token on Solana and Polygon. Notably, the XRP Ledger is not part of that launch, though Ripple president Monica Long highlighted the importance of cross-network payments for the future. Meanwhile, the firm’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, has hit a settlement volume of $2.5 billion on the XRPL, with nearly $900 million of that coming from direct RLUSD/XRP trading. Ripple has also doubled donations to a veterans’ foundation up to $10,000, allowing contributions in XRP or RLUSD to showcase real-world utility beyond speculation.

None of this operational progress is lifting the token’s price. The immediate technical picture remains fragile. Support at $1.10 is under pressure, and if it breaks, the yearly low of $1.01 comes into focus. A sustainable recovery would require clearing resistance at $1.20 — a level the bulls have so far failed to breach.

The gap between Ripple’s expanding ecosystem and XRP’s market performance has rarely been wider. Infrastructure interest is high, but direct demand for the token itself is not following suit. Until that changes, the $1.09 cap may hold.