XRP’s Two Faces: A $1.10 Breakout and a Network Upgrade, Yet a 41% Year-to-Date Slide

XRP gained 1.8% to $1.1026 but remains near 52-week low, down 41% in 2025. Institutional ETF outflows of $7.29M and missed CLARITY Act deadline temper optimism.

XRP managed to punch through the $1.10 resistance on Friday, notching a 1.8% gain in 24 hours to reach $1.1026, but the token’s broader picture remains starkly different. Over the same period that saw a technical breakout and a rare network milestone, the cryptocurrency has shed nearly 41% since the start of 2025, leaving it dangerously close to its 52-week low of $1.01.

The move above $1.10 arrived on heavy volume — roughly 43.5 million XRP changed hands in a single hour, 88% above the daily average — and carried the price to an intraday high of $1.1065. By the weekend, XRP was trading around $1.11, up 2.18% over seven days. Yet that short-term cheer masks a deeper malaise: the token remains 5.54% below its 50-day moving average of $1.18 and a staggering 24.11% below its 200-day average of $1.46. From the July 2025 high of $3.65, the decline now approaches 70%.

Traders are watching to see if the $1.10 level can flip from resistance to support. A hold would open the path toward $1.1065 and then $1.13, but a slip back below $1.088 would likely declare the breakout a failure. The immediate support zone between $1.00 and $1.05 must be defended at all costs; a breach there could send XRP sliding to $0.90, according to technical analysis.

Institutional flows tell a contrasting story

While retail volumes spiked on the breakout, institutional investors are pulling back. On July 8, XRP ETFs recorded one of their worst single-day outflows of the year, with $7.29 million exiting — the entire sum drawn from Bitwise’s fund. That broke a streak of modest inflows that had characterized previous weeks. So far in July, cumulative ETF inflows stand at just $4.68 million, a fraction of the pace seen in earlier months.

The cautious tone is echoed by the absence of a key political catalyst. The CLARITY Act, a proposed regulatory framework that the XRP community had hoped would clarify the token’s status, missed the White House’s July 4 deadline. That pushes any potential decision to the earliest realistic window in early August. For now, buyers have little reason to rush in, and many are sitting on the sidelines.

Network developments offer genuine tailwinds

Beneath the price action, the XRP Ledger is undergoing significant structural change. For the first time, Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD holds more capital on the XRP Ledger than on Ethereum — roughly $810 million versus $756 million. That shift coincides with a surge in tokenized real-world assets on the ledger, which hit $4.18 billion last month, up 28-fold from $147 million a year earlier. Evernorth Research notes that institutional offerings now dominate that growth.

The technical side is also advancing. The validator upgrade to server software v3.2.0, designed to cut operating costs and improve stability for institutional users, has reached 89% adoption among the 35 validators on the default list — a critical threshold for the upgrade to be considered complete. However, only 43% of all network nodes have upgraded, and a separate on-chain vote, fixCleanup3_2_0, is running slower. That vote bundles security fixes for newer features such as single-asset vaults and a permissioned decentralized exchange. Validators that fail to upgrade risk being excluded from the ledger, Ripple has warned.

The tug-of-war continues

Three parallel narratives are now at play: a short-lived price breakout, a maturing network infrastructure, and a persistent bearish undertow driven by institutional disinterest and political inertia. The weekend will test whether the $1.10 level can hold, but the structural headwinds — a 41% year-to-date loss, dwindling ETF demand, and a delayed regulatory catalyst — suggest that any sustained recovery will require more than a single day’s volume spike.