XRP Holds $1.09 as Swift Pilot Stirs Brief Rally While ETF Flows and Network Activity Flag

XRP holds near $1.09 after a Swift pilot fails to catalyze lasting demand; ETF inflows hit record lows, while daily active addresses and new wallets drop to multi-month lows.

XRP is clinging to the $1.09 level, caught between a burst of optimism from a Swift blockchain pilot and deepening cracks in both institutional demand and on-chain engagement. The token briefly jumped 1.6% after Swift announced a test involving 17 banks, including Standard Chartered and UBS — institutions that already have ties to Ripple. But the rally quickly faded, and the price has since settled back into its familiar range between $1.05 and $1.15.

The Swift initiative — designed to explore distributed-ledger technology for cross-border settlement — initially fired up retail speculation. However, a former Swift chief innovation officer, Tom Zschach, quickly poured cold water on the excitement, stressing that the pilot relies on tokenized bank deposits, not on XRP itself. There is no official integration of the token into Swift’s network, though Ripple Treasury joined the Swift Certified Partner Program in April 2026. For XRP holders, the episode reinforced a pattern that has repeated through the year: headlines around Ripple’s banking progress generate short-lived price spikes but fail to translate into sustained buying pressure.

Beneath the surface, institutional appetite for XRP continues to wither. On July 10, spot XRP ETFs attracted a paltry $107,380 — the second-worst day since the products launched, trailing only the $64,610 recorded on April 2. Only the 21Shares fund (ticker TOXR) drew fresh capital; all other issuers sat out entirely. The previous day, July 8, told an even starker story: net outflows of $7.29 million, the largest single-day exodus since March 2026, according to SoSoValue. Cumulative net inflows remain at a solid $1.48 billion, but the week of July 6–10 is shaping up as one of the weakest on record. Whether the nine-week winning streak for ETF inflows survives the final Friday session remains uncertain.

The slowdown on the demand side mirrors a cooling in the XRP Ledger’s own activity. Daily active addresses have dropped to 25,350 — the second-lowest reading this year — while new wallet creations fell to just 2,130, a tally not seen since November 2024. There was a brief counter-move on June 15, when buyers stepped in after a price dip, pushing both the token and active addresses higher. But the recovery proved temporary: XRP reverted to its trading range, and network activity never recaptured the levels seen before the short-lived rally. Analysts attribute the June bounce to existing holders taking advantage of the dip, not to an influx of fresh participants.

Technically, XRP remains under pressure. It sits roughly 8% above its 52-week low of $1.01, set on June 26, and has shed 41.75% year-to-date. From the July 2025 peak of $3.65, the token has lost about 70% of its value. The 50-day moving average at $1.17 and the 200-day moving average at $1.46 both loom overhead, while the Relative Strength Index — at 44 — signals neither oversold nor overbought conditions, but rather a stagnant market. In the 4-hour chart, XRP is trading beneath the Supertrend indicator and has repeatedly failed to break a falling trendline, with resistance at the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level near $1.094.

Derivatives data reinforce the cautious mood. The long-short ratio has slipped to 0.96, meaning bearish bets now slightly outweigh bullish ones, while open interest has contracted from $2.58 billion to $2.33 billion — a sign that speculative traders are closing positions rather than adding new ones.

On the regulatory front, Ripple secured a full MiCA license from Luxembourg’s CSSF, allowing it to offer crypto-asset services across the European Economic Area. It joins a small cadre of Digital Asset firms with such approval. The industry’s Swell conference is also on the horizon, and community chatter often revolves around Ripple’s expanding institutional footprint. Yet analysts note that past Ripple events have rarely moved the needle sustainably. Concrete announcements — named bank partnerships or definitive regulatory rulings — would be needed to shift the current trajectory.

For now, XRP’s price holds steady near $1.09, but the combination of fading ETF inflows, shrinking network activity, and cautious derivatives positioning suggests the token is being held up more by residual support than by fresh conviction. The Swift pilot may have made headlines, but without a direct role for XRP in the settlement mechanism, the rally it inspired was as fleeting as the institutional interest it failed to reignite.