Last week, $XRP surged roughly 30% and traded around $1.29, posting its best performance in recent months.
The token's price spiked sharply against a backdrop of halted inflows to exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which had previously supported its rise.
Wednesday Saw the Heavy Lifting
On Wednesday, $XRP jumped 10.40%, marking its largest single-day gain since February 6, and then continued to climb on Thursday, nearing $1.32 on the weekly candle.
The current level is just below the token's 200-day moving average (DMA), the closest $XRP has been to this mark since the beginning of the year.
As a result of the rally, $XRP rose from the $0.9862 level it reached a week earlier. This is the same range the token was in just before its post-election surge in November 2024, when it reached an all-time high around $3.65.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the daily chart reached 79.2. The RSI scale ranges from 0 to 100, with levels around 80 indicating an asset is strongly overbought.
The catalyst was Bitcoin, which broke above $72,000 on Thursday, reaching its highest level since May.
On Wednesday, according to CoinGlass, $2.75 billion in Bitcoin short positions were liquidated, marking the largest short squeeze event in cryptocurrency history. Total market liquidations reached $3 billion over 24 hours.
The U.S. Treasury Department stated that starting September 9, it would increase the size of its long-term bond buybacks to at least $4 billion per operation.
Traders interpreted this plan as a sign of easing financial conditions, and this move came just hours before a White House meeting between President Donald Trump and executives from crypto companies Coinbase, Ripple, and Robinhood.
ETF Demand Eased While Price Continued to Rise
$XRP exceeded its usual correlation metric with Bitcoin, but ETF demand declined during the sharp rally.
According to a Cryptopolitan report at the time, following the launch of the XRP-focused fund by Canary Capital on November 13, there was a net inflow into U.S. spot $XRP ETFs, which continued for 30 consecutive days and reached a volume of $1.18 billion by mid-December.
This steady flow was one reason for bullish forecasts for the token. CNBC correspondent Sigalos named $XRP the best crypto deal for 2026, pointing to the sustained inflow, which persisted during the Q4 downturn even for Bitcoin ETFs, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
This week saw a reversal for $XRP. The price spiked, and the fund demand that previously pushed $XRP higher subsided somewhat.
Open interest in $XRP has already dropped by over 11% from its peak on the rally day, suggesting some of the leverage underpinning the rise is starting to unwind.
According to CoinGecko, $XRP is trading at $1.26, up 11.3% on the day and 23.1% over the week.
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