XRP’s Network Boom Meets Institutional Hesitancy as the Token Hovers Near $1.10

XRP network activity surges with active addresses up 72% and whale accumulation, but price stays near $1.09 amid crypto sell-off and mixed institutional signals.

XRP is posting its strongest network engagement in months, yet the price remains stuck in a narrow range just above $1.00 — a glaring disconnect that has become a defining pattern for the token in 2026. Daily active addresses surged 72% in two weeks, whales are pulling record amounts off exchanges, and Ripple secured a full regulatory license in Luxembourg. But the market has barely flinched: XRP changes hands at $1.09, up a modest 0.39% on the day and just 0.63% higher on the week.

The Luxembourg milestone, granted by the CSSF on July 6 under the EU’s MiCA framework, allows Ripple to offer crypto-asset services across the entire European Economic Area without seeking separate approvals in each member state. It follows a string of institutional wins for the company this year. Yet the price reaction has been muted — a pattern analysts attribute to a broad crypto sell-off in June that dragged XRP down even as Ripple-specific news remained broadly positive.

A separate development involving Swift has added to the mixed sentiment. The payments messaging giant launched a blockchain pilot with 17 banks, including Standard Chartered and UBS — both of which have existing ties to Ripple. XRP briefly jumped 1.6% on the news. But Tom Zschach, a former Swift chief innovation officer, quickly pushed back against speculation that the network would integrate XRP. The pilot relies on tokenized bank deposits, not the XRP token, and the enthusiasm faded almost as fast as it appeared. The episode highlights a recurring dynamic: genuine progress in Ripple’s payment infrastructure generates headlines and short-lived price spikes, but the direct utility of the XRP token in such systems remains unresolved.

Under the hood, the XRP Ledger is navigating its own procedural hurdle. The network released server version 3.2.0 on June 15, featuring the critical amendment fixCleanup3_2_0 with bug fixes and maintenance improvements. But activation requires approval from over 80% of validators for 14 consecutive days — a threshold that stood at only around 40% in early July. Market observers view the update as a routine stability improvement, though the prolonged voting period serves as a reminder of how decentralized decision-making on the XRPL actually operates.

On-chain data tells a much more bullish story than the price chart. Daily active addresses climbed from 23,000 on June 14 to nearly 39,500 by June 27, a 72% jump. Whale behavior has also shifted: exchange outflows of XRP rose from roughly 40.7 million tokens on June 22 to about 123 million shortly thereafter — a near-200% increase that typically signals accumulation by large holders rather than distribution. The moves contrast sharply with institutional flows in the spot ETF market. According to SoSoValue, XRP ETFs posted net outflows of $7.29 million on July 8, the largest single-day withdrawal since March. That pullback aligns with derivatives data from CoinGlass showing the long-short ratio slipping to 0.96, with bearish positions now slightly outweighing bullish bets, and open interest dropping from $2.58 billion to $2.33 billion.

From a technical perspective, XRP remains under pressure. The token trades nearly 7% below its 50-day moving average of $1.17 and roughly 25% below the 200-day average of $1.46. It has fallen 41.75% year to date and sits 70% below its 52-week high of $3.65 hit in July 2025. The relative strength index stands at 44.1, a neutral reading that gives no clear directional signal. In the 4-hour chart, the price is stuck below the Supertrend indicator and keeps bumping into a falling trendline, with resistance around $1.094 — the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level from the recent sell-off. The 50-day moving average at $1.17 adds another layer of overhead supply.

With the $1.10 zone acting as the pivotal level, the next major move depends on whether buyers can reclaim that area or sellers push the token back toward its 52-week low of $1.01. The network’s rising activity, whale accumulation, and Ripple’s expanding regulatory footprint in Europe all argue for a catalyst-driven upside — but fading ETF demand, bearish derivatives positioning, and an unresolved token-utility question mean that narrative remains firmly unconfirmed by the price.