XRP Clings to $1 as Ripple's Own Stablecoin Eclipses Its Core Use Case

XRP clings to $1 amid 67% yearly drop, as Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin displaces it in institutional flows and SEC delays cloud regulatory outlook.

The psychological floor at one dollar is holding — for now. XRP traded at $1.01 on Tuesday, just 1.8 percent above its 52-week low of $0.9929, a level not seen in roughly two years. The token remains about 70 percent beneath its record high of $3.35, set last year, and has shed 45 percent since the start of 2025. On a twelve-month basis, the decline deepens to 67 percent.

What makes this slide different from previous drawdowns is that the pressure isn't coming primarily from macro headwinds or crypto-wide risk aversion. The structural threat is homegrown: Ripple's own dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, is quietly displacing XRP from the very function that gave it purpose.

A Bridge No Longer Needed

Ripple has been routing institutional business through RLUSD instead of XRP, with ten major corporate deals reportedly executed this year involving partners such as BlackRock, Deutsche Bank and Mastercard. The stablecoin's market capitalization has reached roughly $1.57 billion, and it now accounts for approximately 89 percent of all stablecoin volume on the XRP Ledger. XRP's role in many of these transactions has been reduced to covering the minimal network fee.

That shift has investors questioning whether XRP's original raison d'être — serving as the bridge currency for cross-border settlements within Ripple's ecosystem — is eroding. Analysts at DailyCoin have flagged the stablecoin competition as the more significant structural concern for XRP holders, outweighing short-term price volatility.

The numbers tell the story: RLUSD's rise has coincided with XRP's fall from relevance in institutional flows. What was once a token with a clear utility narrative is now competing with its parent company's own product for the same business.

Regulatory Calendar Keeps Slipping

The regulatory backdrop has done little to restore confidence. The SEC had scheduled a Friday vote on a tailored offering regime for crypto token sales, but postponed the meeting citing an unforeseen scheduling conflict. No new date has been set.

The delay compounds a broader legislative logjam. A five-week Senate recess has stalled progress on the CLARITY Act, legislation designed to provide clearer legal footing for digital assets. The next realistic window for a Senate vote doesn't open until mid-September.

The picture got murkier still when journalist Eleanor Terrett reported that the SEC's planned exemption for tokenized innovations had been pushed back once again. The official agenda for the August 14 meeting at 10 a.m. Eastern now lists only the tailored offering regime proposal — the tokenization exemption has been stripped out. Terrett's read: the agency is reluctant to unveil its own framework while Congress is still negotiating the relevant provisions, wary of upsetting the delicate balance between senators and other stakeholders.

This isn't the first time the SEC has blinked. In May, the agency withdrew a similar proposal that would have broadly permitted US crypto firms to trade tokenized equities. The pattern suggests a regulator waiting for legislative clarity rather than forging ahead.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is scheduled to meet in Washington on August 20, with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse reportedly set to participate in an accompanying committee. Whether that gathering produces any concrete catalyst for XRP remains an open question.

The Chart and the Contradiction

Technically, the picture is strained. XRP trades 6.4 percent below its 50-day moving average of $1.08 and sits 22 percent under the 200-day average of $1.30. The relative strength index reads 37.6 — approaching oversold territory without having crossed the threshold.

Yet on-chain data tells a more complicated story. The number of new XRP millionaires on the ledger has grown by 32 over the past three months, and daily active addresses have climbed noticeably. Large wallet addresses accumulated more than 380 million XRP over the past week, concentrated around the one-dollar mark, according to Santiment. Certain whale cohorts now hold combined positions of roughly 8.1 to 8.13 billion XRP.

CryptoQuant data corroborates the accumulation thesis: order sizes remain in whale territory while the cumulative volume delta stays neutral, suggesting buyers are absorbing available supply rather than aggressively bidding at any price.

The institutional channel, however, tells a different story. Seven XRP ETFs trade in the US with roughly $1 billion in assets under management, and cumulative net inflows since launch stand at $1.51 billion. But in the week through August 8, weekly inflows collapsed by 93 percent — from $14.86 million to just $1.01 million.

That divergence — whales buying while ETF demand evaporates — highlights two investor groups with starkly different assessments of where XRP goes from here. One is accumulating at the dollar line; the other is stepping back entirely.

What Friday's Meeting Means Now

Even without the tokenization exemption on the agenda, Friday's SEC session carries weight for Ripple. Bloomberg reported the commission will examine a tailored offering regime for certain crypto investment contracts — a framework whose eventual tokenization component would directly touch Ripple's payments and custody operations. Stricter anti-money-laundering rules and a requirement for trading platforms to register as US companies are reportedly under discussion.

For traders, the outcome now looks narrower than originally hoped. The fate of the tokenization exemption itself depends on how CLARITY Act negotiations unfold in Congress — a process that won't resume in earnest until September at the earliest.

For now, XRP holds its dollar line by a thread, caught between a parent company whose stablecoin is eating its lunch, a regulator that keeps postponing decisions, and a market split between accumulating whales and retreating institutions.