XRP Traders Confront a Riddle: Network Activity Booms While Prices Sink

XRP trades near $1.31 after SEC settles for $50M, RLUSD stablecoin surges to $1.8B, Mastercard/J.P. Morgan pilot RLUSD, and XRPL processes 3M daily transactions.

XRP sits at roughly $1.31, a mere half-percent gain on the day, but the figure tells only half the story. The token has shed more than 63% of its value from a 52-week peak of $3.56, and short-term holders are nursing unrealised losses of around 55% — the bleakest reading for the 30-day MVRV ratio since December 2020, according to Santiment. Yet behind the price screen, Ripple’s ecosystem is humming with activity that would normally command a far steeper valuation.

On May 28, a major legal overhang was finally removed when the Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew its appeal in the long-running dispute with Ripple. The deal settles a civil penalty of $50 million, well below the $125 million originally demanded, and grants XRP crucial legal clarity on secondary-market sales. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse declared the “anti-crypto army” defeated by court rulings, voter sentiment and backing from the Trump administration. That regulatory tailwind is reinforced by the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which passed a key Senate committee in mid-May and would classify XRP as a commodity, stripping the SEC of jurisdiction over the asset.

The settlement’s impact on price was muted, but the infrastructure story is accelerating. Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD crossed $1.7 billion in market capitalisation on May 28 and has since pushed to $1.8 billion, with monthly trading volume jumping 61%. Beneath that headline number lies a deliberate liquidity operation: Ripple burned $100 million worth of RLUSD tokens on Ethereum over a 48-hour window while minting more than $200 million fresh on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The result lifted native RLUSD liquidity on the XRPL above $690 million, and total stablecoin supply on the network now exceeds $1.1 billion. Transaction fees on the XRPL are paid in XRP, so every stablecoin transfer feeds demand for the base asset.

Institutional validation is stacking up. A report published May 27 confirmed that Mastercard and J.P. Morgan ran successful pilot programmes using RLUSD for tokenised Treasury settlements. Digital asset custodian Copper integrated the stablecoin into its platform during the week of May 22–23, opening the door for hedge funds and asset managers to hold RLUSD within existing compliance frameworks. Meanwhile, US bank SoFi has enabled its roughly 13.7 million customers to buy and hold XRP directly, adding a retail distribution channel that was previously unavailable.

The XRP Ledger itself is undergoing a quiet upgrade. Version 3.1.3 went live on May 27, and the network is now processing around 3 million transactions daily. Tokenised real-world assets on the XRPL have reached a combined value of $2.5 billion, underscoring the ledger’s pivot toward institutional-grade settlement infrastructure.

Complicating the picture is the technical shape of the price chart. XRP has been unable to break resistance at $1.41, and the support zone between $1.28 and $1.24 is now the critical battleground. A break below that band could open the path toward the $1.00 mark, analysts warn. Yet on-chain data from Santiment suggests that whale investors are positioning for a turn: in the past week, wallets holding large amounts of XRP have accumulated roughly 71 million tokens, even as the broader market remains on the sidelines.

The disconnect extends to the ETF space. Bitcoin ETFs suffered outflows of more than $2 billion in May, while XRP-linked products attracted $118 million — the strongest monthly inflow so far this year — pushing total net assets in those funds to $1.12 billion. The divergence hints at a rotation that is still in its early stages.

Ripple has laid the groundwork for a genuine institutional use case, from stablecoin liquidity to bank-grade settlement trials. Whether that infrastructure translates into sustained XRP demand — and finally lifts a price that has been left behind by the network’s own expansion — now hinges on how quickly the regulatory detente draws capital back into the market.