XRP Price Forecast - XRP-USD Nears $2 as $1.80 Support and Shrinking Supply Point to $2.60 Target

Ripple XRP-USD starts 2026 under $2 with a tight supply squeeze

XRP-USD opened 2026 trading boxed between a hard floor around $1.80 and a heavy ceiling just below $2.00. Price has rebounded from the $1.80–$1.85 demand zone into roughly $1.90–$1.96, with multiple feeds showing spot around $1.90–$1.96 while Bitcoin trades near $90,000 and Ethereum around $3,100. The market is not in euphoria; this is a controlled grind higher inside a well-defined range, but the structural backdrop is far more constructive than it was a few months ago.

Short-term price structure for XRP-USD: $1.80 base, $2.00 lid

The immediate map for XRP-USD is simple: demand sits in the $1.77–$1.85 pocket, supply is layered from roughly $1.88 up to the $2.00 handle. Recent sessions saw XRP bounce from about $1.84 to $1.87–$1.90 with a series of higher lows and intraday volatility around 2.5–3%. Volume expanded on pushes toward $1.87–$1.90 and peaked roughly 50% above recent averages, which means buyers were active, not just drifting the tape on thin liquidity. Every approach to ~$1.88 has met selling, keeping the broader $1.77–$2.00 range intact. A clean daily close and sustained trade above $1.88–$1.92 would be the first confirmation that the market is finally chewing through that supply band. On the downside, the structure remains constructive as long as XRP holds above the $1.80 shelf and, more importantly, above the $1.77 floor that has repeatedly attracted dip-buyers.

Bi-weekly TD buy signal and triangle break: why the trend backdrop improved for XRP

On higher timeframes, the technical backdrop for XRP has flipped from distribution to accumulation. A bi-weekly TD Sequential count just printed a macro buy signal after months of lower highs and persistent selling. That trigger did not appear at the start of the slide; it arrived after downside momentum had already cooled and volatility compressed. In parallel, price broke out of a descending triangle that had been capping rallies while the $1.80–$1.85 zone absorbed repeated dips. That behavior – sellers failing to push through support while buyers quietly absorb – is typical of late-stage downside exhaustion. The breakout from that triangle shifts the focus towards $2.20 as the next serious test, then the $2.60–$2.67 band, and finally the prior multi-year pivot around $3.00. The invalidation point of this entire structural repair is clear: sustained trade below $1.80, and especially a weekly close under $1.77, would mean the breakout failed and the market is back in a broader consolidation or renewed downtrend.

Ripple escrow unlock: 1 billion XRP released against a tighter float

The first trading days of 2026 started with a textbook supply event: Ripple’s scheduled escrow unlock released 1 billion XRP in three on-chain transactions around January 1. That is meaningful gross supply – roughly half a percent of total supply – and precisely the sort of headline traders watch when markets sit just under major resistance. There were misleading memos attached by a third party implying large sales, but those messages did not come from Ripple and do not change the underlying flows. What matters is how much of the unlocked stack ultimately hits exchanges versus being re-locked or parked in controlled wallets. On its own, the unlock slightly increases the pool of tokens that could reach the market. In context, however, it lands into one of the tightest exchange-float environments XRP has seen since 2018.

Exchange balances at 8-year lows: real-time evidence of XRP supply tightness

Spot data show exchange-held XRP balances have fallen to roughly 1.6 billion tokens, the lowest level since 2018 and down about 57% since October. That is a major structural change: more than half of the exchange inventory has been drained in a few months. Recent snapshots highlighted additional single-day net outflows of around $7–8 million equivalent when XRP was trading near $1.85–$1.90. This behavior is typical of an accumulation phase. Tokens are moving from liquid venues into longer-term storage or custodial rails instead of sitting in order books waiting to be sold. A shrinking float does not guarantee immediate upside – price still reacts at clear technical walls like $2.00 – but it changes the math of every future impulse. Once new demand appears, the same notional bid will move XRP-USD further and faster than it did when exchange balances were double today’s level.

XRP ETF flows: regulated demand building below the breakout zone

Regulated products have quietly added another layer of demand under XRP. U.S. spot XRP ETFs just reported a net single-day inflow of about $5.58 million at year-end. Total assets in these vehicles now stand near $1.24 billion, with cumulative net inflows of roughly $1.16 billion since launch. The key detail is timing: these inflows arrived while XRP-USD traded in the $1.80–$1.90 range, not in a vertical breakout above $2. Institutions are scaling in during consolidation, not chasing strength. That is exactly how professional capital usually behaves when it is building medium-term exposure. Every dollar moving into ETFs removes tokens from liquid circulation and parks them in a wrapper that does not immediately feed sell pressure back into spot books. The combination of ETF accumulation and falling exchange balances is textbook supply absorption: the market is tightening the float before the next directional phase, not distributing into retail strength.

Derivatives and funding: leverage is building, but not yet overheating on XRP

Derivative metrics confirm that speculative positioning is leaning long, but the structure is still healthier than in prior blow-off phases. Recent data showed XRP funding rates rising to around 0.006, a roughly 95% jump, while price was still consolidating near $1.85–$1.90. Traders are now paying a premium to hold long positions, which signals growing conviction that the breakout will go higher. The sequencing matters: leverage increased after the descending triangle broke to the upside and after the TD buy signal printed, not in the middle of a breakdown. That lowers immediate fragility compared with a scenario where longs pile in late and unhedged at the top. The risk is straightforward: if XRP-USD fails again at $1.88–$2.00 and falls back through $1.82–$1.80, these leveraged longs will be forced to unwind, amplifying downside. For now, though, derivatives are aligned with an early-stage recovery, not a terminal blow-off.

Macro crypto context: Bitcoin and the CLARITY Act set the risk backdrop

The broader crypto environment is supportive but not euphoric. Bitcoin is trading around $89,000–$90,500 after pulling back from the $120,000–$125,000 region and is currently coiling in a symmetrical triangle. The key structural levels are clear: demand around $86,000, resistance around $90,855, with a potential path to roughly $94,000 and then a psychological $100,000 zone if BTC clears that first barrier. A loss of $86,000 would extend consolidation and hurt the risk mood across majors, including XRP. In parallel, regulatory developments in the U.S. are shifting from existential threat to structural constraint. Progress on the CLARITY Act and renewed debate over a potential U.S. crypto reserve are reducing long-term regulatory uncertainty and slowly compressing the risk premium priced into assets like XRP-USD. Market odds still assign only about a low-20s percentage probability to a near-term Bitcoin reserve, so this is not an immediate hard catalyst. It is a background regime shift: regulation is becoming a stabilizing variable that supports accumulation ranges rather than a trigger for panic selling.

Medium-term roadmap for XRP-USD: from $2.20 to $3.00 if structure holds

Putting the structural and flow data together, the medium-term roadmap for XRP-USD is now built around three clean bands. First, the base: as long as $1.80–$1.85 holds on a closing basis and $1.77 continues to attract demand, the late-2025 bottoming process remains intact and the descending-triangle breakout is valid. Second, the pivot: the $1.88–$2.00 region is the battle zone where every prior rally has failed. A decisive reclaim of $1.92–$2.00, with sustained volume and no immediate rejection, would turn that zone from supply into support. Third, the expansion path: if XRP establishes acceptance above $2.00 and pushes through $2.20, the next logical target band is $2.60–$2.67, which acted as a major support in past cycles and now stands as resistance. A later reclaim of that area would leave the $3.00 region as the next structurally justified upside objective, consistent with both the TD buy signal and the scale of the supply squeeze.

Relative valuation: what XRP looks like if it closes the gap with Ethereum

From a market-cap perspective, XRP still trades with a substantial discount to Ethereum. With ETH around $3,000–$3,100 and a market value near $365–$370 billion, and XRP around $1.88–$1.96 with a capitalization in the low-$110 billions, the ratio is roughly 0.3x. Simple circulating-supply math shows what that gap implies. If XRP were to trade at the same aggregate valuation as Ethereum today, its price would be around $6.00 per token – roughly 3.2 times current levels. If it ever reached Ethereum’s prior cycle peak valuation near $580–$585 billion, the implied XRP-USD price would sit around $9.50–$9.70, or a little over 5x from here. Those numbers are not forecasts; they are a clean way to quantify the distance between current positioning and a scenario where XRP is treated by the market as a peer to Ethereum in terms of aggregate value. Importantly, these implied prices are still far below the most aggressive double- or triple-digit calls circulating in social media, which means the current structure does not require unrealistic assumptions to justify substantial upside.

Risk map for XRP-USD: what breaks the bullish accumulation thesis

The bullish accumulation case for XRP-USD rests on three pillars: defended support around $1.80–$1.85, a structurally tight float from exchange outflows and ETF inflows, and a repaired chart structure after the descending triangle break and TD buy signal. The risks are equally clear. First, a clean weekly close below $1.77 would undercut the entire bottoming structure and likely trigger a wave of long liquidations, especially given the elevated funding rates. Second, a sharp reversal in ETF flows – switching from net inflows to consistent net outflows – would turn a current tailwind into direct selling pressure from regulated vehicles. Third, a broad risk-off event driven by macro shock, for example a deeper Bitcoin break below $86,000 coupled with negative headlines around regulation or liquidity, would overwhelm the micro structure and drag XRP back into a wider consolidation band. None of these are hypothetical edge cases; they are the precise conditions that would invalidate the current constructive setup.

Final stance on XRP: bullish bias with a clear line in the sand

Given the combination of price structure, on-chain supply compression, regulated ETF demand and improving macro risk tone, XRP-USD currently screens as a bullish-tilted asset trading just below a major inflection zone. The range is defined: upside potential towards $2.20, $2.60–$2.67 and eventually $3.00 if the market can finally clear and hold above $2.00; downside risk back into the mid-$1.70s if the $1.80 base fails and leveraged longs unwind. On balance, the evidence supports a Buy stance with a strict structural stop under the $1.77–$1.80 band. As long as that line in the sand holds, the risk-reward remains skewed in favor of further upside as 2026 develops, with the caveat that the next major move will be driven as much by Bitcoin’s behavior around $90,855 and $100,000 as by XRP-specific news.

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