Mastercard and Ripple’s D.C. Offensive Bolster XRP’s Institutional Case — Yet Token Slides to $1.14

XRP hits four-month low at $1.14 as geopolitical jitters trigger sell-off, even as Ripple expands DC office and Mastercard integrates RLUSD.

The gap between XRP’s maturing infrastructure and its cratering price has never been wider. While Ripple plants a flag in Washington and Mastercard plugs RLUSD into its settlement engine, the token has crashed to $1.14 — its weakest level in four months. The market’s message is blunt: macro fear is drowning out micro progress.

Ripple’s expanded office in Washington, D.C. is a bet on the next wave of US crypto rulemaking. With Congress debating stablecoin legislation, digital asset market structure and payment modernisation, the company wants a seat at every table. The move lands in a symbolic week — the XRP Ledger turned 14 years old in early June. Launched in 2012, the blockchain settles transactions in three to five seconds, and XRP acts as the native fee token, a design distinction from stablecoins like RLUSD or USDC. The message from Ripple is that institutional adoption won’t happen without regulatory clarity, and that clarity won’t happen without direct engagement.

The same day Ripple announced its Washington push, Mastercard went live with a 24/7 on-chain settlement system supporting six regulated stablecoins across eight blockchains. RLUSD is on the list, alongside USDC and PYUSD. The XRP Ledger is explicitly named as a supported network. Initial partners include Cross River Bank, Lead Bank and Nuvei — all institutions already experimenting with blockchain-based payments. Ripple’s Jack McDonald called it a milestone for blockchain payment infrastructure. Separately, reports surfaced of a planned stablecoin consortium involving Mastercard, Visa and Stripe to standardise liquidity management.

Ripple also extended its RLUSD footprint in Turkey, signing partnerships with BiLira, Bitexen and Bitlo. The Istanbul Technical University joined the University Blockchain Research Initiative and will run an XRPL validator on campus — a move that strengthens network decentralisation more than a typical exchange listing would.

None of that stopped the sell-off. Geopolitical jitters — specifically reports of drone strikes on Kuwait’s airport — triggered a broad risk-off wave. Bitcoin slumped below $63,000 and XRP liquidations topped $25 million in a single day, 96% of them long positions. The token broke through the $1.25 support level and touched $1.14, its lowest since late January.

Technical indicators look grim. The relative strength index, between 22.3 and 23.6 depending on the time-frame, is deep in oversold territory. Price action sits below both the 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Analysts warn that if $1.14 gives way, a drop toward $1.10 becomes the base case.

Institutional demand for XRP exposure is cooling too. On June 3, XRP ETFs recorded net outflows of $5.34 million, with the Bitwise XRP ETF shedding $4.06 million and Grayscale’s product losing around $700,000.

Yet beneath the surface, a different story is unfolding. Coinbase’s order book shows buy orders outpacing sells by a ratio of 7-to-1 — a pattern that market observers attribute to automated accumulation by institutional players using limit orders. Meanwhile, network activity is booming. Daily transactions on the XRP Ledger have tripled from roughly 1 million in mid-2025 to nearly 3 million. The value of tokenised assets on the ledger has surged 340% since January 2026 to $3.68 billion, with platforms like Ondo Finance (tokenised Treasuries) and Justoken (energy assets) driving the growth.

Ripple is now fighting on two parallel fronts — shaping regulation in Washington while deepening the XRPL’s institutional plumbing with Mastercard, Turkish exchanges and academic validators. For XRP to escape its price stagnation, these moves need to turn into real transaction volume on the ledger, not just headlines. Whether the token holds at $1.14 or breaks lower will likely depend on whether the macro backdrop stabilises before the regulatory payoff arrives.