XRP’s $1.37 Stalemate: A Korean Stablecoin Milestone Meets a Billion-Token Unlock

Ripple's May 1 escrow release and Hana Financial's won stablecoin pilot on XRPL fail to move XRP price, which remains stuck below $1.40 amid institutional RLUSD usage.

The first day of May delivered a flurry of activity for Ripple, yet the XRP token barely flinched. A routine escrow release unlocked one billion tokens, a major South Korean fintech completed a proof-of-concept for a won-denominated stablecoin on the XRP Ledger, and the company’s top brass publicly dismissed long-standing conspiracy theories about hidden price controls. The asset’s response? A muted shuffle between $1.38 and $1.40, settling at $1.37 — just below its 50-day moving average of $1.39.

The escrow release itself was textbook Ripple. Four tranches — 400 million, 300 million, 200 million, and 100 million XRP — were unlocked, worth roughly $1.38 billion at the time. Market veterans expect 700 million to 800 million of those tokens to be re-locked into new escrow contracts, as has been the pattern historically. That would leave roughly 33 billion XRP still held in the trust system. The market shrugged, and the price held steady.

The more intriguing development came from Seoul. Hana Financial TI, one of South Korea’s largest financial technology service providers, completed a proof-of-concept for a won-backed stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. The test was conducted in partnership with XRPL Korea and the interoperability protocol Axelar, covering issuance, circulation, and settlement of the digital currency. The timing is deliberate: South Korea is drafting a new legal framework for digital assets, and a successful pilot with an established financial institution could position the XRPL as the go-to infrastructure for regulated won stablecoins before the legislation is even finalized.

This Korean breakthrough follows Ripple’s recent partnership with Kbank, the country’s first pure-play online bank and the exclusive banking partner of the Upbit exchange. Cross-border payments to the UAE and Thailand are already being tested via Ripple’s Palisade wallet. Yet for all the deal-making in Asia, the token price remains stuck in a sideways channel between $1.30 and $1.45 that has held for weeks.

The disconnect between business development and market performance is a recurring theme. Ripple has racked up an impressive roster of institutional partners this year — Convera, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale — but nearly all of them process payments through Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, not XRP itself. That means no direct buying pressure on the token. The same dynamic played out at the XRP Las Vegas 2026 conference, where CEO Brad Garlinghouse pitched the XRP Ledger as infrastructure for institutional finance while the exchange Bullish expanded its partnership with Ripple Prime to offer regulated options markets, again settling in RLUSD.

David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO Emeritus, used the same stage to debunk a persistent community myth: that the company possesses a secret mechanism to artificially inflate XRP’s price. He called the idea economically implausible, stressing that liquidity and transaction volume are the only real drivers.

For May, the calendar is stacked with potential catalysts. Coinbase activated trade-at-settlement for XRP futures on May 1. GraniteShares is set to launch 3x-leveraged XRP ETFs on May 7. And by May 21, the CLARITY Act must clear the Senate Banking Committee for any realistic chance of a floor vote in 2026. US spot ETFs for XRP saw roughly $82 million in net inflows in April, the strongest month of the year, pushing cumulative inflows past $1.29 billion.

Standard Chartered, however, slashed its 2026 price target for XRP from $8 to $2.80 back in February. The token currently trades about 27% below its July 2025 high of $3.56, and the technical picture offers little immediate relief. The 50-day moving average at $1.39 has acted as resistance, and every attempt to break above $1.45 has been rejected.

The fundamental story is one of genuine infrastructure buildout — a won stablecoin pilot in Korea, a regulatory beachhead in Dubai, a growing ETF ecosystem — but the token itself remains a spectator to its own ecosystem’s expansion. Until the transaction flows shift from stablecoins to XRP, the price action will likely stay tethered to the broader market’s appetite for risk, and to the clock ticking on Washington’s legislative calendar.