Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

While Bitcoin and altcoins continue their sideways movement, developments related to MICA, one of the most talked-about topics in the cryptocurrency market, continue to unfold.

The latest news comes from Ripple. The company behind the altcoin XRP announced today that it has received a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license in Luxembourg under the European Union’s Crypto Asset Markets (MiCA) regulation.

In this context, Ripple announced that it has received full Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) authorization from Luxembourg’s CSSF under the EU’s MiCA framework.

This approval follows its preliminary authorization in June and allows Ripple to offer regulated crypto services in all 30 countries of the European Economic Area.

Cassie Craddock, Ripple’s General Manager for the UK and Europe, stated, “This CASP authorization means Ripple is entering the post-MiCA era fully compliant and scalable. The organizations we work with across Europe want to develop digital asset services alongside regulated partners, and Ripple is licensed and ready to meet that demand.”

Ripple also stated that it holds more than 75 regulatory licenses globally.

It’s official: Ripple has received its EU CASP license. We are now fully MiCA-compliant and ready to meet growing European crypto demand https://t.co/I9GRgvfGzH

— Ripple (@Ripple) July 6, 2026

Binance Failed to Obtain a License! In contrast, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been unable to obtain a license under the European Union (EU) MICA. As a result, Binance is suspending its trading services in some European countries, including France, due to its lack of a MICA license.

In this context, Binance suspended its spot and margin trading services for users in affected countries starting from May 1st, when the MICA regulations fully came into effect. Currently, users can withdraw cryptocurrencies but cannot make new transactions.

MICA is legislation introduced to create a unified regulatory framework for crypto assets across the EU, and in principle, unlicensed exchanges cannot provide trading services in the region. In this regard, major global exchanges, including Binance, are undergoing licensing processes to meet regulatory requirements.

*This is not investment advice.

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On the first day of every month, one billion XRP leaves a set of locked contracts on the XRP Ledger, and every month traders argue about what it means. Here is the full machinery: why the escrow was created, how the ledger enforces it, where the released tokens actually go, and how to read the unlock without being fooled by the headline number.

At around 07:30 UTC on July 1, 2026, on-chain trackers flagged three transfers on the XRP Ledger: 200 million XRP, then 300 million, then 500 million, exactly one billion tokens worth roughly $1.04 billion at the time. Nobody at Ripple pressed a button that morning. The release was executed by the ledger itself, under contracts written in December 2017, on a schedule that has repeated on the first of the month for years.

The event has become a monthly ritual. Whale Alert posts the transfers, headlines announce that a billion dollars of XRP has been unlocked, newer holders panic, and veterans point out that most of the tokens will be locked right back up within days. Both camps are reacting to the same mechanism, and most people in both camps could not explain how it actually works: what an escrow is at the ledger level, why Ripple built one, how much XRP truly enters circulation each month, or how long the whole arrangement can continue.

The escrow also sits at the center of XRP’s sharpest ongoing argument. When Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse attacked Strategy’s Bitcoin financing in late June, saying financial engineering does not drive long-term value, critics immediately pointed at the escrow: Ripple funds itself, in part, by selling tokens from this very system every month. Understanding the mechanism is now a prerequisite for understanding the debate.

This guide covers the escrow end to end: the 2017 problem it was built to solve, the transaction types that enforce it, the monthly release and relock cycle, the destinations of the sold tokens, the supply math, the price question, the criticism, and how to track all of it yourself.

The problem the escrow was built to solve When the XRP Ledger launched in 2012, all 100 billion XRP that will ever exist were created at once. There is no mining and no staking issuance; the full supply existed on day one. The founders gifted the majority of it to the company that became Ripple, which used sales of the token to fund operations, partnerships, and ecosystem development.

That arrangement created a permanent shadow over the market. Through 2017, Ripple still held more than half of all XRP in ordinary accounts it could spend at will. Every rally ran into the same objection: nothing stopped the company from selling tens of billions of tokens into strength whenever it chose. The overhang was not hypothetical selling; it was the unlimited possibility of selling, which no buyer could price.

Ripple’s answer, announced in mid-2017 and executed that December, was to lock 55 billion XRP, then worth a dominant share of its holdings, into a chain of escrow contracts enforced by the ledger itself. The contracts were structured as 55 monthly tranches of one billion XRP each, releasing on the first day of each month. Whatever the company did not use in a given month would be returned to new escrows queued at the back of the line.

The design converted an open-ended threat into a bounded, published schedule. After December 2017, the maximum amount of new XRP that Ripple could bring into circulation in any month was one billion tokens, and everyone could verify the limit on-chain. The company gave up flexibility to buy credibility, the same trade a central bank makes when it publishes a policy rule, or a startup makes when it puts founder shares behind a vesting cliff.

It is worth being precise about what the escrow did not do. It did not reduce Ripple’s holdings by a single token, and it did not promise that the company would stop selling. It capped the pace. The distinction between locked supply and destroyed supply still drives confusion today, and it is the root of most bad takes about the monthly unlock.

What an escrow is on the XRP Ledger The escrow is not a legal agreement or a corporate pledge. It is a native feature of the XRP Ledger protocol, which means the lockup is enforced by the same consensus rules that validate every payment on the network. Ripple could not release the tokens early even if it wanted to, short of convincing the validator network to change the protocol itself.

Three transaction types run the system. EscrowCreate locks an amount of XRP into a ledger entry with a source account, a destination account, and release conditions. EscrowFinish delivers the locked XRP to the destination once the conditions are met. EscrowCancel returns the XRP to the source if the escrow expires unfinished. The conditions can include a time before which the escrow cannot be finished, a time before which it cannot be cancelled, and optionally a cryptographic condition that must be satisfied for release.

Ripple’s supply escrows use the time lock: each tranche simply cannot be finished before the first day of its assigned month. Once that date passes, an EscrowFinish transaction moves the billion tokens to Ripple’s operational accounts, which is what the trackers flag every month. The tranches often arrive in pieces, like July’s 200, 300, and 500 million splits, because the original escrows were created as multiple entries.

The receiving accounts are secured with the ledger’s native multisignature scheme, which requires several keys to authorize spending and lets individual signers rotate credentials without moving the funds. That matters because a system holding tens of billions of dollars in value would otherwise be a single point of catastrophic failure.

Escrow was not built only for Ripple’s treasury. The feature was designed for conditional payments and cross-ledger settlement through the Interledger Protocol, and the same primitive now underpins more ambitious plumbing on the network, part of the same toolkit that is turning the ledger into a venue for institutional finance. Ripple’s supply schedule is simply the largest and most famous use of a general-purpose tool.

The monthly cycle: release, spend, relock The headline event, one billion XRP unlocked, is only the first step of a three-part cycle, and it is the least informative one.

Step one is the release. On the first of the month, the time lock on that month’s tranches expires and the tokens move to Ripple’s accounts. This is the moment Whale Alert broadcasts and headlines report. At July 2026 prices the billion tokens were worth about $1.04 billion; at the 2018 peak the same monthly release was worth more than three billion dollars. The dollar figure changes, the token count does not.

Step two is allocation. Ripple decides how much of the billion it actually needs for the month: sales to institutional partners, liquidity for payment corridors, ecosystem investments, and operating expenses. Historically this has been a minority of the release.

Step three is the relock. Within hours to days, Ripple returns the unused majority, typically 600 to 800 million tokens and in some months more, to fresh escrow contracts queued behind the existing schedule. In December 2025, for example, roughly 70 percent of the unlocked tokens went straight back into escrow. The relock transactions are just as public as the release, and experienced observers watch them far more closely than the unlock itself, because the difference between the two numbers is the only figure that matters.

That difference, the net release, has generally run between 200 and 300 million XRP per month across recent cycles. At current prices that is in the range of 200 to 350 million dollars of potential monthly supply, some of which goes to buyers who never touch an exchange. Back-of-envelope, a net release at that pace adds roughly four to six percent to circulating supply per year, a real but bounded inflation rate that the market can model years in advance.

The relock mechanics also explain why the escrow has lasted far beyond its original 55 months. Every returned token extends the queue, so the schedule keeps rolling forward. What was designed as a 55-month runway has become a self-extending conveyor that is still running nearly a decade later.

Where the released XRP actually goes The tokens Ripple keeps each month flow into a handful of destinations, and the mix has shifted with the company’s strategy and its legal history.

The most consequential category is institutional sales. Ripple sells XRP directly to financial institutions and market makers, historically to seed liquidity for its cross-border payment product, where XRP serves as a bridge asset between currencies. These direct sales were the exact activity at issue in the SEC lawsuit: the 2023 ruling found that Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP were unregistered securities offerings, while sales on exchanges to the public were not. The escrow itself was never the legal problem, but it is the reservoir those institutional sales draw from.

The second category is ecosystem funding. Grants to XRP Ledger developers, investments in companies building on the network, regional funds, and partnership incentives are routinely denominated in XRP. The company’s broader 2026 strategy, spanning payments, custody, stablecoins, and its role in projects like the Open USD consortium alongside RLUSD, is financed by a treasury in which escrowed XRP remains the largest asset.

The third category is ordinary corporate operations. Salaries, acquisitions, legal bills, and expansion are paid, directly or indirectly, from the same pool. Ripple has spent heavily on acquisitions in custody and prime brokerage, and token sales remain a funding source a conventional company would have to replace with equity or debt.

One thing Ripple does not do with the escrow is buy XRP back. The company runs buyback programs for its own private shares, not for the token. Community proposals to burn the remaining escrowed supply surface regularly, and Ripple has declined them; chief technology officer emeritus David Schwartz has publicly dismissed the idea that a burn would guarantee a lasting price rally.

The honest framing is that the escrow is a corporate treasury with a public spending speed limit. The tokens fund a company, and the schedule tells the market exactly how fast the funding can flow.

The supply math in 2026 The numbers as of mid-2026 look like this. Total XRP supply stands just below 100 billion, at roughly 99.99 billion, because transaction fees on the ledger are permanently destroyed; about 14 million XRP have been burned since 2012, a rounding error against total supply. Circulating supply is around 62 billion tokens. Ripple’s remaining escrowed stash is estimated near 38 billion XRP, with additional tokens held in its operational accounts.

Divide the escrow by the net release rate and you get the question every long-term holder eventually asks: when does it run out? At 200 to 300 million net tokens per month, current estimates put depletion roughly nine years out if present patterns hold. Schwartz has pushed back on attempts to name an exact year, arguing that no date can be pinned down because depletion depends entirely on how much of each monthly billion the company keeps versus relocks, which in turn depends on operational needs that nobody can forecast a decade ahead.

Both sides of that exchange are correct. The mechanical arithmetic gives a horizon in the mid-2030s; the caveat is that the divisor is a management decision renewed every month. A bull market that lets Ripple fund itself with fewer tokens stretches the runway. A spending surge shortens it. The escrow bounds the maximum pace at twelve billion tokens per year, but the actual pace floats.

The end state is worth thinking about now, because it inverts today’s dynamic. Every month the escrow shrinks, Ripple’s future maximum sell pressure shrinks with it, and the day the last tranche releases, the overhang that the escrow was built to manage is simply gone. Whether that is bullish supply exhaustion or the loss of a disciplined funding machine that kept the company honest is one of the more interesting open questions in XRP’s long-term story, and it gets one month closer on the first of every month.

Does the unlock move the price? The evidence for a reliable unlock effect is thin, and the reason is the schedule’s whole point: an event that everyone can see coming years in advance is an event the market can price in advance.

The release date never surprises anyone. The token amount never surprises anyone. The only genuine information in the monthly cycle is the relock figure, which reveals how much Ripple kept, and even that varies within a well-known band. Short-term traders do report a pattern of mild pressure and elevated volume around the first of the month, a one to three percent wobble is commonly cited, but disentangling that from ordinary volatility in an asset that moves five percent on quiet days is close to impossible.

The July 2026 unlock is a useful case study. The billion tokens released on July 1 landed in a market where XRP had just closed its worst month in recent memory, down nearly 20 percent in June to a 19-month low near $1.01, before recovering to trade around $1.04. Headlines framed the unlock as another weight on a drowning asset. Yet the same week, spot XRP ETFs in the United States were extending a multi-week streak of net inflows even as Bitcoin funds bled, meaning regulated institutional demand was absorbing supply while the escrow released it. The unlock was the loudest supply story and close to the least informative one.

The deeper lesson is the same one that applies to reading ETF creation and redemption data: headline gross numbers mislead, and net figures matter. A billion unlocked is a gross number. Six to eight hundred million relocked is the offset. Two to three hundred million net, sold gradually, partly off-exchange, into a market that trades more than a billion dollars of XRP daily, is the real supply event, and it is modest.

None of that makes the unlock irrelevant. It makes it a scheduled, bounded, transparent form of sell pressure, which is precisely what it was designed to be.

The criticism: a company-shaped hole in a decentralized asset The escrow solves the dumping problem and creates a philosophical one. XRP is the only major cryptocurrency whose monthly supply expansion is decided in a corporate treasury meeting, and critics have never let the point go.

The centralization objection is straightforward. Bitcoin’s issuance is set by an algorithm no company controls. XRP’s effective issuance is set by Ripple’s monthly relock decision. The schedule is transparent and capped, but it is still one firm’s choice, and holders are structurally downstream of that firm’s funding needs. For skeptics, that makes XRP less a decentralized asset and more a corporate instrument with a public float.

The sell-pressure objection got fresh oxygen in June 2026, when Garlinghouse attacked Strategy’s model of issuing preferred stock to buy Bitcoin, calling the slide in its preferred shares a damning indictment and insisting that utility, not financial engineering, drives long-term value. Traders pounced on the symmetry: Ripple funds itself by selling a token it created, from an escrow it controls, into the market it champions. One widely shared critique called the two firms two giants with the same model, each leaning on the asset it defends. The comparison is not perfect, Ripple sells an asset it was granted at genesis while Strategy borrows against one it bought, but the shared feature is real: both companies are structural sellers or leveraged holders of the asset their shareholders and communities want to rise.

There is also a subtler critique: the escrow’s existence proves the concern it was built to address. Companies with no power to crash their own asset do not need to lock 55 billion tokens to reassure anyone. The escrow is both the remedy and the permanent reminder of XRP’s concentrated origins.

Defenders answer that every funding model leans on something, that a published on-chain speed limit is more honest than the opaque treasury sales common across crypto, and that a decade of relock discipline is a track record, not a promise. Both readings fit the same facts, which is why the argument never ends.

How XRP’s schedule compares with other supply systems Placing the escrow next to other issuance mechanisms clarifies what is genuinely unusual about it.

Bitcoin’s supply comes from mining rewards on a halving schedule fixed in the protocol. No entity decides anything; the only discretionary sellers are miners, and when their economics break, the result is the kind of forced miner selling that hit records in early 2026. Bitcoin’s sell pressure is distributed across an industry; XRP’s scheduled component is concentrated in one company but capped by contract.

Ethereum mints new ETH as staking rewards and burns a portion of fees, so net issuance floats with network activity around a low rate. Again, no single seller dominates, and no schedule exists to publish.

The closest relatives to Ripple’s escrow are found in token projects, not commodity-style chains. Foundation treasuries, investor unlock cliffs, and team vesting schedules all release supply on calendars, and unlock-tracking has become a trading discipline of its own. XRP’s version differs in three ways: it is enforced by the base protocol instead of a smart contract or a legal agreement, it has run without a missed or altered month since 2017, and it is refilled by relocking, which makes it self-extending instead of finite by design.

The comparison cuts both ways. Against venture-backed tokens with cliff unlocks that dump double-digit percentages of supply in a day, XRP’s smooth billion-per-month drip with a 70 percent refund rate is conservative. Against Bitcoin’s zero-discretion issuance, it is corporate management. Where an investor lands depends on which reference class they reach for, and both are legitimate.

Tracking the escrow yourself Everything described above is public, and verifying it takes minutes.

The release transactions appear on any XRP Ledger explorer on the first of each month, flagged by monitoring services like Whale Alert within moments. Explorers such as Bithomp and XRPScan label Ripple’s known accounts, so the escrow finishes and the subsequent movements are easy to follow without any special tooling.

The relock is the transaction that deserves the attention. Within roughly 24 to 72 hours of the release, look for large EscrowCreate transactions from Ripple’s accounts returning tokens to new time locks. Subtract that figure from one billion and you have the month’s true net release, the only number in the cycle with information in it. A month where Ripple relocks 850 million reads very differently from a month where it relocks 550 million, and the difference never makes headlines.

Ripple also publishes quarterly reports summarizing its XRP sales and holdings, which provide the company’s own accounting of what the on-chain data shows. Third-party dashboards aggregate escrow balances and project depletion timelines; treat the projections as arithmetic, not prophecy, for the reasons Schwartz gave.

A practical checklist for reading any unlock month: confirm the gross release, wait for the relock, compute the net, compare it with the trailing average of 200 to 300 million, and check whether demand-side flows, exchange volumes, and, since late 2025, ETF creations look adequate to absorb it. If the net is in the normal band, the unlock told you nothing new. If it deviates sharply, that is a real signal about Ripple’s cash needs, and it will be visible on-chain before anyone writes it up.

Frequently asked questions What is the XRP escrow? The XRP escrow is a set of time-locked contracts on the XRP Ledger holding tokens that belong to Ripple. Created in December 2017 with 55 billion XRP, the contracts release a maximum of one billion tokens on the first day of each month, and the ledger protocol itself enforces the lock.

How much XRP is unlocked each month? The contracts release up to one billion XRP monthly, usually in several tranches on the first of the month. Ripple typically returns 600 to 800 million of those tokens to new escrow contracts within days, so the net amount entering circulation has generally been 200 to 300 million XRP per month.

Why did Ripple lock its XRP in escrow? Before 2017, Ripple held tens of billions of XRP in spendable accounts, and the market feared the company could sell unlimited amounts at any time. Locking 55 billion tokens behind a published monthly schedule capped the maximum pace of sales and made the limit verifiable on-chain.

Does the monthly unlock crash the XRP price? There is little evidence of a consistent price effect. The schedule is known years in advance, most unlocked tokens are relocked, and the net release is small relative to daily trading volume. Short-term volatility around the date exists but is hard to separate from XRP’s normal price swings.

How much XRP is left in escrow? As of mid-2026, estimates place the remaining escrowed balance near 38 billion XRP. The figure declines by whatever Ripple keeps each month and is publicly visible on XRP Ledger explorers that track the company’s escrow accounts.

When will the XRP escrow run out? At recent net release rates, projections cluster around nine more years, but no exact date is possible. Depletion depends on how much of each monthly billion Ripple relocks, a decision the company makes month by month based on its operational needs.

Can Ripple unlock the escrowed XRP early? No. The time locks are enforced by the XRP Ledger protocol, not by a company policy. An escrow cannot be finished before its release date under the network’s consensus rules, so early access would require a protocol change accepted by the validator network.

What happens to unlocked XRP that Ripple does not use? Unused tokens are placed into new escrow contracts queued at the back of the schedule, a step visible on-chain as EscrowCreate transactions in the days after each release. This relocking is why the escrow has lasted far beyond its original 55-month design.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 6, 2026.

The cryptocurrency market is experiencing widespread weakness on Monday, with Bitcoin (BTC) sliding under the $63,000 mark amid ongoing risk aversion. Major altcoins, including Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP), are following suit, trending lower toward key support levels at $1,700 and $1.10, respectively.

Persistent capital outflows weigh on Bitcoin and EthereumRisk sentiment in the crypto market remains significantly subdued, weighed down by macroeconomic headwinds, geopolitical uncertainties, and a dearth of clear catalysts. Despite the crypto Fear & Greed Index ticking up to 24 on Monday, from an average of 12 last week, appetite for risk assets has not improved.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index | Source: AlternativePersistent outflows from US-listed Bitcoin spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) underscore waning institutional interest, with $527 million withdrawn last week alone. This marks the eighth consecutive week of net redemptions, reinforcing the ongoing bearish narrative.

Despite the outflows, cumulative inflows remain positive at $51 billion, while net assets under management average $74 billion.

Bitcoin ETF flows | Source: SoSoValueEthereum spot ETFs present a similar grim picture to Bitcoin, with outflows totaling $14 million last week, down from $273 million the previous week. According to SoSoValue, ETH ETF outflows have persisted for the eighth consecutive week, reflecting ongoing institutional investor caution.

Despite the current market headwinds, cumulative inflows hold steady at $11 billion, with total assets under management at $9 billion, signaling that conviction among long-term investors remains resilient.

Ethereum ETF flows | Source: SoSoValueInterest in XRP spot ETFs holds steady, outperforming both Bitcoin and Ethereum to post nearly $12 million in inflows last week. With nine straight weeks of inflows, interest in XRP-related digital investment products remains intact despite the headwinds and broader risk-off sentiment.

Cumulative inflows hold steady at $1.49 billion while net assets under management average $988 million, according to SoSoValue data.

XRP ETF flows | Source: SoSoValuePrice analysis: Bitcoin trades under increasing pressureBitcoin remains capped below a dense ceiling of moving averages, with the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $65,739 and the 100-day EMA at $69,453 reinforcing a broader downtrend defined by the resistance trendline near $71,371.

The Crypto King holds just above the Bollinger middle band around $61,936, suggesting tentative near-term support, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovers around 49, pointing to neutral momentum despite a still-positive Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram, which hints that bullish pressure is not yet strong enough to reclaim the overhead structure.

BTC/USDT daily chartOn the topside, initial resistance emerges at the Bollinger upper band near $65,513, followed by the 50-day EMA around $65,739 and the 100-day EMA close to $69,453. Beyond these levels, the downtrend break zone at $71,371 and the 200-day EMA near $75,529 form a broader supply region.

On the downside, immediate support is lies at the Bollinger middle band around $61,936, with further demand near the lower Bollinger band at approximately $58,359. A sustained break below these levels would expose the pair to a deeper leg lower within the prevailing bearish bias.

Ethereum bears tighten grip amid deepeningEthereum trades at $1,756, keeping a bearish near-term bias as price holds below key EMAs. The 50-day EMA at $1,805 and the SuperTrend line around $1,805 form a tight resistance cluster just overhead, while the 100-day and 200-day EMAs at $1,972 and $2,256 respectively sit well above the market, reinforcing a broader downtrend.

Still, momentum has improved, with the MACD line above its signal and in positive territory and the RSI hovering slightly above 50, hinting that recent buying pressure is attempting to challenge this overhead supply.

ETH/USDT daily chartOn the topside, immediate resistance is defined by the $1,805 zone, where the SuperTrend and 50-day EMA converge. A sustained break above this area would expose the next hurdle at the 100-day EMA near $1,972, ahead of the more substantial 200-day EMA barrier around $2,256.

The smart contracts token remains vulnerable to persistent headwinds, with traders likely watching price behavior around the $1,700–$1,750 band for signs of whether the nascent momentum can persist or the dominant bearish trend reasserts itself.

XRP eyes short-term support as headwinds intensify XRP remains capped in the near term, with price holding below the 50-day EMA at $1.18 and well under the 100-day and 200-day EMAs at $1.29 and $1.50 respectively, reinforcing a broader bearish structure despite the recent bounce.

The MACD has turned positive and is edging higher, while the RSI hovers around the neutral 50 line, suggesting improving but still fragile momentum as price oscillates between the Bollinger Bands’ midline and upper layers.

XRP/USDT daily chartOn the topside, initial resistance is seen at the upper Bollinger Band near $1.20, with the 50-day EMA at $1.18 acting as a nearby dynamic barrier that needs to be reclaimed to ease downside pressure. Above these barriers, the 100-day EMA at $1.29 and the 200-day EMA at $1.50 define subsequent resistance layers. Looking down, the Bollinger middle band around $1.10 provides the first notable support, ahead of the lower band near $1.01, where a break would likely reopen the bearish leg toward lower levels.

(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor. Know more.)

Bitcoin, altcoins, stablecoins FAQs Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, a virtual currency designed to serve as money. This form of payment cannot be controlled by any one person, group, or entity, which eliminates the need for third-party participation during financial transactions.

Altcoins are any cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin, but some also regard Ethereum as a non-altcoin because it is from these two cryptocurrencies that forking happens. If this is true, then Litecoin is the first altcoin, forked from the Bitcoin protocol and, therefore, an “improved” version of it.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to have a stable price, with their value backed by a reserve of the asset it represents. To achieve this, the value of any one stablecoin is pegged to a commodity or financial instrument, such as the US Dollar (USD), with its supply regulated by an algorithm or demand. The main goal of stablecoins is to provide an on/off-ramp for investors willing to trade and invest in cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins also allow investors to store value since cryptocurrencies, in general, are subject to volatility.

Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of Bitcoin's market capitalization to the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined. It provides a clear picture of Bitcoin’s interest among investors. A high BTC dominance typically happens before and during a bull run, in which investors resort to investing in relatively stable and high market capitalization cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. A drop in BTC dominance usually means that investors are moving their capital and/or profits to altcoins in a quest for higher returns, which usually triggers an explosion of altcoin rallies.

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

TL;DR

XRP's Binance Scarcity Index jumped to 0.77 in early July, the highest reading since summer 2024, as whales pull coins into non-custodial wallets while price holds near $1.14.A BitGo-custodied wallet moved 114.9 billion SHIB, worth about $502,230, into a previously inactive cold wallet, a signal of accumulation rather than sell pressure.Strategy CEO Phong Le published a manifesto calling Bitcoin a "guarantor of monetary freedom," even as the company sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million across two tranches.Bitcoin fell below $62,000 as the miner stress index hit 0.00, matching capitulation lows from 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2022.Markets are watching the July 7 NY Fed inflation expectations and July 8 FOMC minutes as the next directional catalyst.Binance records XRP's deepest scarcity since 2024XRP entered the third quarter of 2026 with a sharp imbalance in its supply structure. According to fresh on-chain data from CryptoQuant, published this Monday, Binance has recorded a historic draining of XRP order-book liquidity. 

The specialized Binance XRP Scarcity Index made a vertical jump to 0.77 in the first days of July — the highest level of liquidity shortage since the summer of 2024.

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Analysts at Arab Chain stress that the worsening scarcity is isolated in nature. While XRP's spot price is trading near $1.14, attempting to hold above local resistance after a push to $1.159, the freely circulating supply of coins is shrinking quickly. 

XRP Binance Scarcity Index from January  2024 to July 2026, Source: CryptoQuantThe trend shift is being driven by large holders: around the turn of the half-year, whales minimized new deposits and intensified withdrawals to non-custodial wallets, effectively removing tokens from the market.

Historically, this kind of reserve drain at the start of July has acted as a strong leading indicator. Selling pressure declines, while the situation in the order books tightens like a spring, and since July traditionally opens a period of higher activity for XRP, any local inflow of buyer demand — against the backdrop of continued inflows into XRP ETFs — could trigger a sharp price impulse. 

The nearest target for the start of a rally is the $1.17–$1.20 zone, while in the case of market cooling, the asset could return to firm support at $1.10.

BitGo whale hides 114 billion Shiba Inu coins in a new walletWhile the crypto market opens July 2026 in prolonged consolidation, major players have begun hidden maneuvers. A whale used the BitGo custody service and withdrew 114.9 billion SHIB through the WalletSimple platform in two transactions, according to Arkham. 

This entire massive token volume settled at a completely new address that had previously been inactive. At the current rate on July 6, 2026, which is holding near $0.0000044 per token, the wallet balance is valued at approximately $502,230. 

Fresh wallet '0x873366' absorbing 114.9 billion SHIB from BitGo, Source: ArkhamAccording to on-chain tracker data, SHIB tokens were transferred directly to a cold address, bypassing the hot wallets of centralized trading platforms.

This route means there is no immediate pressure on the meme coin's market order book. For the current market phase, this is a classic marker of preparation for a large over-the-counter deal or a transfer of assets into long-term storage by a major fund. 

Further activity from this wallet is worth watching especially closely for Shiba Inu token holders.

Strategy manifests freedom while the market counts its million-dollar salesAt the start of the new week, Strategy CEO Phong Le published the "Bitcoin is Freedom" manifesto, calling the first cryptocurrency "the United States of money." The executive drew a parallel between the blockchain's algorithmic code and the U.S. Constitution, arguing that the protocol replaces bureaucracy and official interventionism with transparent rules, decentralized consensus, and limited issuance.

According to Le, the network reproduces a model of capitalism with free competition and protection of property rights without being tied to geography.

However, the loud rhetoric about Bitcoin's long-term resilience coincided with a large corporate move into cash, adding sharpness to the piece. Fresh corporate reporting for the past week showed that, at the turn of the quarter, Strategy reduced its reserves by 3,588 BTC, selling coins in two tranches: 1,363 BTC at the end of June and another 2,225 BTC between July 1 and July 5.

Dynamic of Bitcoin price amid statement from CEO Le and recent announcement of BTC sale, Source: TradingViewThe sale brought the company $216 million in total, increasing its dollar reserves to $2.55 billion as of July 5, 2026.

At the start of the third quarter of 2026, Strategy still holds its position as the largest whale, with a balance of 843,775 BTC, while the value of its digital assets at the end of Q2 stood at $49.67 billion. At the same time, the audit revealed an accumulated unrealized loss of $8.31 billion.

The contrast between the CEO's statements about Bitcoin as a "guarantor of monetary freedom" and sales aimed at protecting financial metrics triggered skepticism among observers. On the news of growing sales from Strategy, Bitcoin fell below the psychological $62,000 mark.

Pressure from a key institutional player clearly triggered a wave of local sell-offs, forcing traders to reassess risks while corporate leadership discusses the global freedom of blockchain.

Crypto market outlook: Saylor and miner capitulation pressure Bitcoin near July's key trendlinesBitcoin is testing the strength of the $62,000 support zone, reacting to a confirmed breakdown of the local long-term trend amid news of BTC sales by Michael Saylor. The market has frozen ahead of the FOMC minutes, which will determine whether the current sell-off turns into a full move toward $58,000 or launches a V-shaped reversal.

Key checkpoints:

BTC/USD technical breakdown: The price impulsively broke below the support line near $62,500 with a vertical red candle, briefly dropping to $62,118. The main horizontal volume area, according to the VRVP POC, was traded higher — in the $62,600–$62,850 range — turning this zone into local resistance. Meanwhile, the RSI(14) fell to 37.73, confirming the development of downside momentum.Absolute miner capitulation: The miner stress index fell to 0.00, matching the lows of 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2022. The realized profit/loss ratio is at a 43-month low. The total amount of BTC held at a loss reached 10.5 million, which has historically pointed to the formation of a macroeconomic bottom.Macroeconomic trigger on July 7: The release of the NY Fed's consumer inflation expectations for June. A decline in the figures would strengthen the probability of Federal Reserve monetary easing after weak NFP data showed only 57,000 new jobs.FOMC minutes on July 8: The release of the Fed minutes will define the medium-term trend. Dovish rhetoric would trigger a short squeeze, while hawkish signals would send the price to test the key $60,000–$62,000 support zone. You Might Also Like

Brad Garlinghouse called Strategy’s sliding preferred shares a damning indictment of financial engineering. Traders answered with an uncomfortable observation: Ripple also funds itself from the asset it champions, one billion escrowed XRP at a time. The feud between crypto’s two most leveraged evangelists says more about both companies than either intended.

Summary

Brad Garlinghouse criticised Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury model, prompting traders to argue that Ripple also relies on regular XRP sales from escrow to fund its operations. The report says both companies depend on recurring market demand for the assets or securities they sell, although their funding structures and financial risks differ significantly. Strategy’s model faces pressure from fixed dividend obligations, while Ripple’s escrow based funding is presented as more flexible but remains dependent on sustained demand for XRP. In the last days of June 2026, with Strategy’s flagship preferred stock trading roughly 25 percent below its $100 par value, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse decided to say what he thought about it. Financial engineering, he argued across a CNBC appearance and a run of posts, does not drive long-term value; utility does. The slide in Strategy’s preferreds was, in his words, a damning indictment of a model built on perpetually selling paper against Bitcoin.

The crypto market being what it is, the counterattack arrived within hours, and it did not come from Strategy. It came from traders pointing at Ripple’s own balance sheet. One widely shared critique put it in five words: two giants, same model. Ripple, the observation went, funds its operations by selling XRP released from escrow every month, tokens it received for nothing at the network’s genesis. Strategy funds Bitcoin purchases by selling preferred shares and debt against coins it bought on the open market. Both companies are, structurally, perpetual sellers of claims connected to the asset their communities want to appreciate.

The comparison is not perfect, and the imperfections are where it gets interesting. But the fact that it landed at all, and stung, reveals something true: the two loudest corporate evangelists in crypto both run treasuries that lean on their chosen asset, and each has built a machine that only works while the market keeps buying what the machine sells. Garlinghouse’s attack on Saylor was accurate. So was the response.

This is an autopsy of the feud: what Garlinghouse actually said, what is really breaking at Strategy, how Ripple’s own funding machine works, where the symmetry holds and where it fails, and why the fight matters for holders of both assets.

What Garlinghouse said, and why now The Ripple chief executive’s late-June comments were unusually pointed for a man who spends most of his public time on regulatory diplomacy. Utility drives long-term value, he argued, and financial engineering does not; companies that exist to hold an asset, funded by issuing securities against it, are running a trade, not a business. The specific exhibit was Strategy’s preferred stock complex, and above all STRC, the retail-focused instrument that had slipped to around 25 percent below its $100 par before a partial recovery toward $84.

He also reached for history. Michael Saylor had spent years dismissing XRP, at one point in 2022 calling it an unregistered security that would be regulated out of relevance, a comment the Ripple community has never forgotten and the SEC case ultimately did not vindicate. Garlinghouse returning fire in Strategy’s weakest quarter was, among other things, a settling of accounts four years in the making.

The timing was not random. Strategy’s model is under its most sustained pressure since the company began accumulating: Bitcoin spent June grinding to 21-month lows near $57,750 before a modest bounce, and the mathematics of the treasury trade turned openly ugly. The company holds 847,363 BTC at an average cost near $75,650, which at June’s lows put the position more than $10 billion underwater on paper for the first time in the current cycle. The market value of the company converged with the value of its coins, with the closely watched mNAV ratio touching 0.99, meaning the equity briefly priced the entire corporate structure at less than the Bitcoin inside it.

For a company whose whole premise is that its securities deserve a premium to their Bitcoin backing, an mNAV below one is not a data point. It is the thesis inverting.

Garlinghouse chose his moment the way prosecutors choose theirs, when the defendant is already bleeding.

Four years of accumulated grievance The feud reads as sudden only to observers who missed its long fuse. Saylor and Garlinghouse have been running opposed theories of crypto value since 2020, and each man’s theory requires the other’s asset to be a mistake.

Saylor’s Bitcoin maximalism was never quiet about XRP. His 2022 dismissal of the token as an unregistered security destined for regulatory oblivion came during the darkest stretch of the SEC lawsuit, when Ripple’s survival was an open question and the token was delisted across American platforms. The comment did not age well in its specifics; the 2023 ruling found XRP itself was not a security in exchange sales, the case settled, and by late 2025 the token had spot ETFs trading in New York. But it cemented a personal dimension that ordinary corporate rivalry lacks. In the XRP community’s memory, Saylor kicked them at the bottom, and Garlinghouse’s June offensive was received there less as analysis than as overdue payback.

The structural rivalry deepened as the companies converged on the same buyers. Strategy’s pitch to institutions is Bitcoin exposure through familiar securities; Ripple’s pitch, increasingly, is regulated crypto infrastructure, custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage, sold to the same treasurers and asset managers. Each chief executive now spends his public life arguing that institutional capital should flow through his door, which makes every stumble by one a sales document for the other. When Strategy’s preferreds slid, Ripple’s sales narrative improved by exactly that much, and Garlinghouse’s decision to narrate the slide personally was, among other things, marketing with a decade of receipts attached.

There is also a generational symmetry neither would enjoy hearing. Both men are the last of crypto’s founder-evangelist chief executives still running at full volume: survivors of multiple cycles, personally synonymous with their assets, and increasingly graded by markets that have stopped awarding style points. The 2026 bear market is auditing both legacies at once, which is why a single CNBC hit escalated so fast.

Neither side is arguing about a preferred stock. They are arguing about which of two life’s works the next cycle vindicates.

What is actually cracking at Strategy Strategy’s machine has three moving parts: buy Bitcoin, issue securities against the story, use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin. The genius of the design in a bull market is reflexivity; every part reinforces the others. The problem in a bear market is the same reflexivity running in reverse.

The preferred stock complex is where the stress concentrates, because the preferreds are the instruments that carry mandatory-feeling obligations. STRC and its siblings pay rich fixed dividends, marketed to income investors as a way to earn double-digit yield on a Bitcoin-adjacent instrument. Those dividends must be paid in cash, and Strategy’s operating software business generates only a sliver of the required amount. The rest comes from issuing more securities, which works while prices cooperate and compounds the obligation when they do not. Analysis circulating from CryptoQuant put the company’s cash and equivalents against its dividend run rate at roughly 14 months of coverage, a runway, not a crisis, but a runway that shortens every quarter the capital markets stay closed to new issuance at acceptable prices.

The company’s response has been to reframe. A newly published Digital Credit framework recasts the preferred complex as a deliberate credit structure rather than an equity kicker, alongside disclosures of a cash position near $3.8 billion intended to reassure preferred holders that dividends are funded regardless of Bitcoin’s path. The reframing had an effect; STRC bounced from its lows toward $84. But a bounce toward 84 cents on the dollar is still a market pricing meaningful doubt into a par instrument, and the underlying arithmetic, fixed cash obligations against a volatile treasury asset, is unchanged.

The bond market’s verdict has been quieter but harsher than the equity market’s. Instruments marketed on the premise that Bitcoin’s ascent makes their coupons safe are being repriced on the premise that the coupons must survive Bitcoin’s descent, which is a different underwriting question entirely, and one the complex was never really sold to answer.

None of this means Strategy is broken. The company has survived worse drawdowns, holds an asset with a history of violent recoveries, and has never been forced to sell a coin. What has cracked is the premium, the market’s willingness to pay more than one dollar for a dollar of Strategy’s Bitcoin, and the premium was the engine. A treasury company at mNAV 1.0 is just a fund with expenses and a dividend bill.

Ripple’s machine, examined honestly To weigh the two giants claim, the Ripple side of the ledger needs the same unsentimental treatment.

Ripple received the bulk of XRP’s fixed 100 billion supply at the network’s creation. In December 2017, it locked 55 billion of those tokens into ledger-enforced escrow, releasing a maximum of one billion per month, a system whose mechanics are worth understanding in full because it is the load-bearing structure of the company’s finances. Each month, Ripple keeps a portion of the release, typically returning 600 to 800 million tokens to new escrows, and the kept portion, generally 200 to 300 million XRP, funds institutional sales, ecosystem investment, and operations.

Strip away the terminology and the structure is this: a private company holding tens of billions of tokens it did not buy, selling a bounded stream of them into the market, every month, for going on a decade. The July 1 release moved one billion XRP, worth about $1.04 billion, through the machine on schedule. The sales are real supply that holders absorb; back-of-envelope, the net release adds an effective inflation of several percent per year to circulating XRP. When Garlinghouse says utility drives value, critics answer that whatever the utility, the most reliable flow in the XRP market is Ripple selling.

The company’s defense is disclosure and discipline. The schedule is public, protocol-enforced, and has never been broken; the relock rate shows restraint; the sales increasingly go to institutional buyers off-exchange; and the proceeds built an actual business, spanning payments, custody, a stablecoin, and the institutional finance stack growing on the XRP Ledger. Ripple processed some $16 trillion in payments volume last year by its own telling, though almost none of it moved through digital assets, a caveat that critics note does heavy lifting.

The war chest the machine built is the part critics skip. A decade of escrow-funded operations left Ripple with cash, an investment portfolio, and acquisition capacity that let it buy its way into prime brokerage and custody during the bear market, spending when leveraged competitors were retrenching. Whatever the model’s fairness, its output is a company that does not need favorable markets to survive them, which is precisely the resilience Strategy’s structure lacks. The same tokens that fund the machine also hang over it: Ripple still holds tens of billions of XRP inside and outside escrow, a treasury whose paper value swings billions with every large move in the token, and whose eventual disposition is the largest known variable in XRP’s long-term supply.

The honest summary: Ripple’s funding model is a slow, transparent, rule-bound liquidation of a genesis grant. That is neither fraud nor utility. It is a financial structure, the very category Garlinghouse aimed at Saylor.

Where the symmetry holds The two companies rhyme in more ways than either community likes to admit.

Both are structural sellers of claims tied to their asset. Ripple sells the asset itself from escrow; Strategy sells securities collateralized by the story of the asset. In both cases, the community holding the asset provides the bid that the corporate machine sells into, and in both cases the machine’s health depends on that bid persisting. The dynamic is familiar from every corner of crypto where a large holder must sell to operate, from foundations to the miners whose forced selling set records this year: the entity most invested in the asset’s success is also its most dependable source of supply.

Both are bets that a corporate structure can capture value from a decentralized asset. Saylor’s claim is that Strategy transforms Bitcoin into yield-bearing instruments the traditional market can buy, and deserves a premium for the packaging. Ripple’s claim is that a company can build enough utility around XRP that the token appreciates despite the company’s own selling. Each asks holders to believe the corporate layer adds more than it extracts.

Both have concentrated key-man risk and evangelist chief executives whose personal credibility is a balance sheet asset. And both, crucially, have never been tested by the one scenario their critics model: a market that stops absorbing the machine’s output for years rather than months. Strategy has never had to sell Bitcoin into weakness; Ripple has never faced a market that could not soak up its net release. The 2026 bear market is the closest either has come, which is exactly why the feud erupted now.

Where the symmetry breaks The differences matter as much as the rhyme, and they cut in both directions.

Ripple’s advantages are structural. It sells an asset it was granted, not one it bought with leverage, so there is no cost basis to defend and no margin for a drawdown to destroy. Its obligations are discretionary; the company can slow sales, and owes nobody a dividend. Its escrow is a ceiling, not a floor, and a decade of relocking is a real track record of restraint. Strategy, by contrast, carries fixed cash obligations against a volatile asset, the classic shape of every leveraged treasury accident in financial history. On pure survivability, the comparison flatters Ripple.

Strategy’s advantages are about alignment. Saylor bought his Bitcoin; every coin on the balance sheet was paid for at market, and shareholders chose the leverage knowingly. Ripple’s XRP cost it nothing, which means every sale is nearly pure proceeds, and the buyers funding the company are, in the main, believers in the token the company was given. Critics of Ripple find that arrangement more troubling than Strategy’s, not less: Saylor is levered alongside his holders, while Ripple is structurally the counterparty to its own community. The SEC agreed in part, finding in 2023 that Ripple’s institutional XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings, litigation Strategy never faced for buying an asset regulators treat as a commodity.

There is also a difference in what failure looks like. If Strategy’s model fails, the damage is concentrated: preferred holders and shareholders eat losses, and Bitcoin absorbs a large forced seller. If Ripple’s model fails, meaning the market permanently stops absorbing escrow releases at viable prices, the company slows the machine and lives off its accumulated war chest and businesses, from custody to its stablecoin and consortium positions. One machine is fragile and aligned; the other is durable and extractive. Pick your indictment.

What breaking would actually look like Since both communities spend the bear market gaming the other machine’s failure, it is worth specifying, mechanically, what failure would require for each. The exercise is clarifying, because neither breaking point is where the rhetoric puts it.

Strategy does not break at any particular Bitcoin price. An unrealized loss, even the ten-figure one June produced, forces nothing by itself. The machine breaks at the intersection of three conditions: capital markets closed to new issuance at tolerable terms, the cash runway for preferred dividends exhausted, and Bitcoin still depressed when the runway ends. The CryptoQuant-style coverage math, roughly 14 months at recent burn, is therefore the number to watch, along with every successful or failed issuance that extends or shortens it. If the company reaches the runway’s end with markets still shut, the choices collapse to suspending preferred dividends, which detonates the income story the complex was sold on, or selling Bitcoin, which detonates the never-sell story the equity was sold on. Either detonation is survivable as finance and devastating as narrative, and Strategy is, before anything else, a narrative company.

Ripple’s machine breaks differently, because its obligations are soft. The company cannot be forced to sell escrow releases into a bid that is not there; it can relock more, spend reserves, and wait. What actually breaks the model is a demand-side regime change that outlasts the war chest: exchange volumes, institutional sales, and ETF absorption persistently below the net release for years, forcing the company to choose between starving its operations and visibly capitulating on price. The tell would appear first in the monthly relock data, months where Ripple returns far more than 800 million because it cannot place the difference, and in the ETF creations that have so far run inflows even through the June collapse. Ripple’s breaking point, in other words, is measured in years of demand drought, whereas Strategy’s is measured in months of dividend runway. That asymmetry, more than any quote from either chief executive, is the real difference between the giants.

The shared vulnerability is the reflexivity of reputation. Each machine runs on the founder’s credibility with a specific buyer base, income investors for Saylor, the XRP faithful and institutional partners for Garlinghouse, and credibility is the one input that cannot be relocked or refinanced once spent. Public feuds draw down exactly that account, which is the best argument that this fight, entertaining as it is, was unwise for both.

What the feud is really about Beneath the personal history, Garlinghouse and Saylor are arguing about the only question that matters for corporate crypto: what entitles a company to trade at a premium to the assets it touches?

Saylor’s answer is packaging and leverage: transform a volatile commodity into instruments with yields, durations, and risk profiles that traditional capital can hold, and the transformation deserves a spread. The 2026 drawdown is testing whether that spread survives an mNAV of one, and the original exchange that started this feud happened precisely because the test is live.

Bitcoin will evolve by changing less at the protocol layer and mattering more everywhere else.

The base layer will harden.
The capital markets will deepen.
Digital Credit will expand.

The world will build on Bitcoin. $BTC https://t.co/2ptwt4XJdu

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 6, 2026 Garlinghouse’s answer is utility and adoption: build payment corridors, custody, stablecoins, and bank integrations, and the token underneath appreciates on fundamentals. The awkwardness is that after a decade of building, XRP trades near $1.15, down roughly 70 percent over a year, while the company thrives, a divergence that suggests corporate success and token appreciation are far more loosely coupled than the utility thesis promises.

The stakes extend well past the two companies, because each man is the reference implementation for a sector. Strategy spawned an entire class of digital asset treasury companies, dozens of firms across Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and beyond, that copied the playbook of issuing securities to accumulate tokens, and the whole class has compressed toward or below net asset value in the 2026 drawdown. If the original cannot hold a premium, the copies have no argument at all, and the capital markets window that funded the sector’s accumulation closes for everyone at once. Ripple, meanwhile, is the reference case for the token-issuer-as-operating-company model, the template every foundation and labs entity with a treasury full of its own token quietly studies. How the market ultimately judges a decade of escrow-funded operations sets the discount rate on every project financed the same way.

Neither man can point at the scoreboard right now. Strategy’s premium has evaporated; Ripple’s token has detached from its company. Both models produced billion-dollar enterprises, and both have so far failed, in this bear market, to produce what their communities actually bought in for.

The question holders should actually ask For all its entertainment value, the feud offers one genuinely useful lens to holders of either asset: identify the machine, then ask what keeps it fed.

Strategy’s machine is fed by capital markets. The question for its investors is not whether Saylor believes, but whether new buyers of preferreds and converts keep showing up at prices that let the dividends get paid without selling coins. Watch issuance windows, coverage runway, and the mNAV, because those are the machine’s vital signs, and the recent bounce in STRC is the market betting, tentatively, that the framework holds.

Ripple’s machine is fed by the XRP market itself. The question for its holders is not whether the company wins customers, but whether the demand side, exchange flow, institutional sales, the new ETFs that have been quietly absorbing supply, keeps outrunning a permanent, transparent seller. Watch the monthly net release against those flows, because that ratio, not partnership headlines, is what the last decade says actually governs the float.

Two giants, same model was meant as a gotcha, and it worked because it was half true. The fuller truth is sharper: two giants, two machines, one shared dependency. Both run on belief that renews monthly, and in a market like this one, belief is the scarcest collateral either company holds.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 6, 2026.

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

Ripple today announced it has received authorization of its Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF).

This follows the preliminary approval announced in June 2026 and confirms Ripple as fully MiCA-compliant, with its crypto payments solution now available to financial institutions, corporations, and companies in all 30 European Economic Area nations.

The CASP license, when combined with Ripple's existing EU Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence, will allow European banks, fintechs, and corporations to access Ripple's entire cryptoasset and stablecoin payments infrastructure, enabling them to collect, exchange, and pay out through a single integration for the first time.

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Ripple UK CEO Cassie Craddock celebrated the milestone in an X post. "We're fully licensed in Europe and excited to keep building on the incredible momentum of recent months. Let's go," Craddock wrote.

We're fully licensed in Europe and excited to keep building on the incredible momentum of recent months. Let's go!🚀 https://t.co/LVKKKgpKVX

— Cassie Craddock (@CraddockCJ) July 6, 2026 The executive noted a demand among the institutions Ripple works with across Europe to build their digital asset services alongside regulated partners, and the company is now licensed and ready to meet that demand.

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Alongside its EU EMI license, Ripple's CASP approval places it among the few digital asset providers with full MiCA authorization, adding to a global portfolio of over 75 regulatory licenses.

XRP, RLUSD set to benefitThe RLUSD stablecoin and XRP underpin Ripple's solutions, which span global payments, custody, liquidity, and treasury management.

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The CASP license approval will let Ripple expand its cryptoasset services to financial institutions and businesses across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area. As a result, the RLUSD stablecoin and XRP are set to benefit immensely.

The license also positions Ripple to delve into broader crypto-asset activities in Europe as it continues to meet rising European demand for digital asset services and infrastructure. Europe is already a key market for Ripple's products, with some of the world's major financial institutions among its customers.

While XRP holders everywhere else argue about ETF flows and price charts, one country quietly turned the token into working infrastructure. Regulated prepaid money on the XRP Ledger, a Deloitte-attested stablecoin, tokenized bonds paying XRP bonuses, and a financial giant that pays shareholder dividends in the token. This is what the utility thesis looks like when someone actually builds it.

Summary

Japan has built the world’s most extensive real world XRP ecosystem through SBI with licensed prepaid tokens, RLUSD distribution, tokenized bonds, and shareholder rewards. SBI Ripple Asia’s regulated prepaid token framework opens access to Japan’s 30 trillion yen prepaid payments market using the XRP Ledger. Japan is proving XRP’s infrastructure utility through regulated adoption even as the token’s market price remains driven largely by ETF flows and speculation. In March 2026, a Japanese travel company began selling prepaid payment tokens to ordinary consumers, issued on the XRP Ledger, under a license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency. No press cycle followed, no price candle marked the moment, and most XRP holders outside Japan never heard about it. It was, nonetheless, a first that the token’s global community has waited more than a decade for: real, regulated, consumer-facing money moving on the ledger, in the world’s third-largest economy, under the full supervision of a G7 regulator.

The company behind the license, SBI Ripple Asia, is one arm of a structure with no parallel anywhere else in crypto. SBI Holdings, the Tokyo financial conglomerate spanning brokerage, banking, insurance, and asset management, has spent a decade wiring Ripple’s technology and the XRP token into the machinery of Japanese finance: a joint venture for payments, an exchange business distributing RLUSD with audited reserves, tokenized corporate bonds that pay bonuses in XRP, bank remittance corridors, loyalty-point conversion, and, in a flourish no Western public company has matched, XRP paid out to SBI’s own shareholders as a benefit.

The result is a natural experiment the rest of the XRP world should study closely. Everywhere else, the token’s story in 2026 is financial: ETF flows, escrow releases, a price near $1.15 that has lost roughly 70 percent in a year. In Japan, and effectively only in Japan, the story is operational. One country took the utility thesis literally, and the gap between that country and everywhere else has become the sharpest lens available on what XRP actually is.

This is the anatomy of the SBI empire: how the alliance was built, what each piece does, what the 30 trillion yen prepaid experiment means, and what Japan proves, and fails to prove, about the token underneath.

JUST IN: Japan tokenizes prepaid payments on the XRP Ledger with SBI and Tobu Top Tours issuing tokens for the 30 trillion yen prepaid market pic.twitter.com/1zYYC57IeE

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 19, 2026 A decade of patient wiring The SBI-Ripple relationship is old by crypto standards, and its age is the point. SBI Ripple Asia was founded in 2016 as a joint venture to bring Ripple’s settlement technology to Japanese and Asian financial institutions, back when the pitch was replacing correspondent banking messaging. SBI Holdings became one of Ripple’s largest outside shareholders, and its chief executive, Yoshitaka Kitao, one of the token’s most senior corporate evangelists anywhere, a position he has held through two bear markets that silenced most of his peers.

What distinguishes the Japanese build-out is that it advanced through the regulator, not around it. Japan’s Payment Services Act and its licensing regimes for exchanges, stablecoins, and prepaid instruments are among the strictest in the world, drafted in the shadow of Mt. Gox. Every piece of the SBI-Ripple stack exists because it cleared that bar: the exchange arm is licensed, the stablecoin distribution is licensed, and the newest layer, prepaid tokens, required SBI Ripple Asia to register as a prepaid payment instrument issuer, which it completed on March 26.

The strategy compounds slowly and survives drawdowns, which is precisely what the rest of the XRP ecosystem has struggled to do. While the token’s price detached from Ripple’s corporate success everywhere else, a divergence now so stark that the company’s own funding machine has become the subject of open debate, the Japanese structure kept adding licensed capabilities through the decline. Bear markets kill speculative adoption; they barely register against regulatory roadmaps measured in years.

The depth of commitment shows in details that would be unthinkable at a Western firm. SBI has distributed XRP to its own shareholders as a shareholder benefit, a program renewed in 2026 with distributions beginning May 1, effectively paying dividends in the token to hundreds of thousands of Japanese retail investors. Whatever one thinks of the token, no other public financial conglomerate on earth compensates its owners with it.

The regulator that Mt. Gox built None of the SBI structure is intelligible without Japan’s regulatory history, because the country’s crypto framework was forged by catastrophe earlier and more thoroughly than anywhere else on earth.

Tokyo hosted the industry’s first systemic disaster: the 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox, then the world’s dominant Bitcoin exchange, which vaporized hundreds of thousands of customer coins and put crypto on the front page of every Japanese newspaper as a consumer-protection failure. The political response was not prohibition but codification. Japan amended the Payment Services Act to license exchanges years before Western peers had any framework at all, then tightened again after the 2018 Coincheck hack, building a regime of segregated custody, cold-storage mandates, listing reviews, and capital requirements that made Japanese licenses among the hardest and most valuable in the industry.

The same instinct produced the world’s first comprehensive stablecoin law, in force since 2023, which restricted issuance to banks, trust companies, and licensed money transfer agents, and the prepaid instrument framework that SBI Ripple Asia’s March registration slots into. Where American crypto policy spent a decade as litigation and Europe’s arrived only with MiCA, Japan built its rulebook early and then, crucially, stopped changing it. Predictability, not permissiveness, is the Japanese advantage: a firm that plans a five-year build on the Payment Services Act can trust the act will still be there.

That environment selected for exactly the kind of player SBI is. The compliance costs that strangle startups are a rounding error for a conglomerate; the decade-long timelines that venture capital cannot tolerate are ordinary corporate planning in Tokyo; and the regulator’s preference for long-standing, capitalized, domestically accountable issuers hands incumbents the field. Japan did not set out to build the world’s best jurisdiction for a Ripple alliance, but a decade of post-Gox rulemaking produced precisely that, and SBI was the institution positioned, and patient enough, to notice.

The history also explains the strategy’s export problem, which shadows everything that follows: the model works because the rules are stable and the champion is native. Neither condition can be shipped.

The prepaid breakthrough: 30 trillion yen in reach The March registration is the piece with the largest addressable prize, because Japan’s prepaid economy is enormous and structurally ready for tokenization.

Japanese consumers hold prepaid value everywhere: transit cards, convenience store balances, gaming credits, gift instruments, corporate points. The market’s annual scale runs around 30 trillion yen, roughly $200 billion, and it operates under the Payment Services Act’s prepaid instrument framework, a regime that already accommodates digital value issued against fiat. SBI Ripple Asia’s registration lets it issue those instruments as tokens on the XRP Ledger, converting a paper-and-database industry into on-chain balances without asking regulators for anything novel.

The first live deployment made the strategy legible: Tobu Top Tours, the travel arm of the Tobu railway group, launched a prepaid token for travel spending, issued and redeemed under the PSA framework, running on XRPL mainnet. A tourist’s prepaid travel balance is now a ledger asset, transferable and programmable within the license’s limits, settling on the same infrastructure that carries XRP itself.

Two properties make this bigger than one travel product. First, it is a template, not a bespoke integration; the registration covers a category, and every subsequent issuer, a retailer, a game publisher, a transit operator, can reuse the same rails. Second, it seeds the ledger with regulated, yen-denominated value at consumer scale, the raw material for the payments network Ripple has promised for a decade. Prepaid tokens do not require anyone to hold or even know about XRP, but they generate transaction flow, wallet adoption, and institutional operating experience on the ledger, the boring accumulation that the XRPL’s institutional finance stack needs far more than another partnership announcement.

The realistic caveat: 30 trillion yen is the market’s size, not SBI’s share, and incumbent prepaid giants will not concede it because a competitor found a better database. Japan’s cashless economy is already crowded with entrenched closed-loop systems, QR wallets with tens of millions of users, transit cards tapped billions of times a year, point programs woven into every retail chain, and each incumbent owns its float, its data, and its customer relationship precisely because its system is closed. The XRPL pitch to those players is interoperability and issuance cost, real advantages that nonetheless ask incumbents to open ecosystems they profit from keeping shut.

SBI’s likelier early wins are exactly what Tobu Top Tours represents: mid-sized issuers in travel, gaming, and regional retail for whom building proprietary rails never made sense, aggregated one license at a time. The breakthrough is the license and the template. The land grab is still ahead, and it will be fought store by store against some of the stickiest payment habits on earth.

RLUSD with a Japanese passport The second pillar arrived five days after the prepaid registration. On March 31, SBI VC Trade, the group’s licensed crypto exchange, began distributing Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to Japanese customers, making it among the first foreign-issued stablecoins to enter Japan through the front door of its regulatory regime.

The distribution came with reserve attestations by Deloitte showing approximately $1.568 billion in assets backing roughly 1.49 billion RLUSD in circulation at the time of the review. In a country where the yen-stablecoin framework is strict enough that domestic issuance has moved slowly, a dollar token with a Big Four attestation and a licensed local distributor is a product with genuine institutional reach, and one whose paperwork alone signals which market it was dressed for.

RLUSD’s Japanese beachhead matters to the global picture more than its size suggests. Ripple’s stablecoin strategy, from its role in the Open USD consortium to its positioning against Circle and Tether, depends on proving RLUSD can win regulated distribution that rivals cannot easily replicate. Japan is the proof case: Tether has never cleared Japanese listing requirements, and the market’s stablecoin shelf is nearly empty. Being early on an empty, heavily regulated shelf is how USDC won Europe under MiCA, and SBI is running the same play for RLUSD in Asia.

The alliance stacked a third pillar the same quarter: tokenized corporate bonds. SBI issued 10 billion yen of its START digital bonds through BOOSTRY’s blockchain platform, retail-accessible instruments paying 1.85 to 2.45 percent, sweetened with XRP bonuses for bondholders through 2029. A conglomerate paying bond incentives in XRP is marketing, but it is also plumbing: it normalizes the token inside conventional Japanese retail finance, one coupon at a time.

The rest of the web Around the three pillars runs a mesh of smaller commitments, individually minor and collectively the texture of real adoption.

Banking: Tottori Bank, a regional institution, uses Ripple-powered rails for remittances, continuing the original SBI Ripple Asia mission of wiring Japanese regional banks into modern settlement. The corridor work is the oldest and least glamorous layer of the stack, and in some ways the most telling: regional bank integrations survive on reliability metrics and audit trails, not conference keynotes, and a rail that has cleared retail remittances under FSA supervision for years is the kind of reference customer that no marketing budget can buy. The regional banking sector, with its aging customers, thin margins, and heavy reliance on slow legacy transfer systems, has always been the most natural Japanese customer for the technology.

Consolidation: SBI has been in talks to fold Bitbank, one of Japan’s larger independent crypto exchanges, into its orbit, a move that would concentrate even more of the country’s licensed trading infrastructure inside the group. In a market where licenses are the moat, buying licensed capacity is buying distribution.

Loyalty: Rakuten’s vast points ecosystem connects to crypto conversion paths that include XRP, linking the token to one of the most widely held loyalty currencies in the country. Points-to-crypto is a small pipe, but it is a pipe pointed at tens of millions of ordinary consumers.

Venture and events: Ripple has committed a $500 million fund for Japanese and Asian corridor development, and the ecosystem’s confidence shows in the calendar: XRP Tokyo 2026, staged with participation from investors including a16z, made the city the token’s de facto global capital this year. Even the group’s hedging tells a story; SBI signed a memorandum with Fasset that contemplates multi-network token issuance, a reminder that the conglomerate’s loyalty is to its strategy, not to any single ledger.

Talent and standards flow through the same mesh. Japanese engineers trained on XRPL integrations inside SBI subsidiaries seed the domestic developer base; the group’s participation in industry associations shapes how Tokyo writes the next round of token rules; and every licensed deployment produces compliance playbooks that shorten the path for the deployment after it. None of this appears in any adoption dashboard, and all of it is why institutional ecosystems, once rooted, prove so hard for competitors to displace.

Ripple, for its part, keeps feeding the region: its acquisition of BC Payments Australia on March 11 extended licensed payment capacity in the neighboring corridor, the kind of unglamorous license-shopping that built the Japanese position in the first place.

JUST IN: Rakuten Wallet launches $XRP as a listed asset and payment method starting from April 15, allowing users to buy with Rakuten Points and spend at over 5 million merchants in Japan pic.twitter.com/cYTZajrmyO

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 13, 2026 Kitao’s long bet Institutional strategies this durable usually trace to one person, and in this case the person has never hidden. Yoshitaka Kitao built SBI out of the SoftBank orbit in the late 1990s into one of Japan’s most aggressive financial groups, and he adopted the Ripple thesis early, publicly, and with a conviction that has outlasted every cycle since. He has used shareholder meetings to talk price targets, put XRP into the group’s shareholder benefit program, and steered corporate development, the joint venture, the exchange arm, the mining and Web3 subsidiaries, around the thesis for a decade.

The bet’s texture is worth appreciating. Kitao committed a regulated, listed conglomerate to a foreign startup’s token in 2016, when the token had no legal clarity anywhere, then held the position through the SEC lawsuit that made XRP untouchable in America, through delistings, through an 80 percent drawdown, and through the 2026 slide. Japanese corporate governance gives a founder-chairman latitude that few Western boards would extend, and Kitao has spent that latitude on patience. The feud now raging between Ripple’s and Strategy’s chief executives over whose model creates value has a quiet third participant: the only major institution that took the utility thesis and actually financed a decade of it.

The dependence runs both directions. For Ripple, SBI is not one partner among many; it is the distribution, licensing, and political capital behind effectively every Japanese achievement the company can point to, which is why Ripple’s regional commitments, the $500 million corridor fund, the Tokyo flagship events, concentrate there. For SBI, Ripple’s technology and token are a differentiator no domestic rival can copy quickly, a moat made of licenses and relationship-years.

Which is also the risk. Kitao is in his mid-seventies. The strategy’s continuation is a succession question as much as a market one, and conglomerates have a long history of new management quietly unwinding a founder’s signature enthusiasms. The Fasset memorandum’s multi-network language, and the group’s general drift toward network-agnostic tokenization, read naturally as institutional hedging around exactly that mortality, corporate and personal. The empire is real. It is also, in the end, one man’s conviction wearing a conglomerate’s balance sheet.

What Japan proves, and what it cannot The Japanese experiment is the strongest evidence anywhere for the utility thesis, and its limits are just as instructive as its successes.

What it proves: the technology clears real regulatory bars. The XRP Ledger now carries licensed consumer prepaid money, a Deloitte-attested stablecoin, and tokenized bonds inside a G7 regulatory perimeter. The perennial skeptic’s claim that no serious regulator would ever bless the stack is, as of this spring, simply false. It also proves the institutional patience model works: a decade of joint-venture building through the regulator produced compounding capabilities that no bull-market partnership spree ever has.

What it cannot prove: that any of this accrues to the token’s price. Prepaid tokens settle in yen value; RLUSD is a dollar instrument; tokenized bonds pay yen coupons. XRP itself is the bridge and gas asset of the ledger they run on, and holders’ monthly reminder of the supply side arrives from escrow regardless of how many travel tokens Japan issues. The uncomfortable arithmetic of 2026 is that the year of Japan’s breakthroughs was also the year XRP fell to $1.01 lows, because the flows that price the token, ETF creations, exchange speculation, escrow absorption, dwarf the ledger’s operational activity and will for years.

The 2026 market backdrop makes the divergence vivid. Spot XRP ETFs launched in the United States in November 2025 to a $1.3 billion opening surge, saw their first outflows in the spring, then settled into a steady multi-week inflow streak even as Bitcoin funds bled through June, leaving roughly a billion dollars under management. Those flows, plus the escrow’s net release, plus exchange speculation, are the entire visible price formation of XRP, and not one of the three has anything to do with a travel token in Saitama. Japanese adoption enters the price, if ever, through a channel so long and indirect, ledger activity to institutional confidence to allocation decisions, that no honest analyst would model it inside a single cycle.

There is a second, subtler limit: the Japanese stack mostly does not need XRP the asset even where it uses XRPL the network. Prepaid instruments are yen claims; RLUSD is a dollar stablecoin with its own reserve economics; bond bonuses denominated in XRP are marketing budget, not settlement demand. The ledger burns trivial XRP in fees and uses it as a bridge only where a corridor chooses it. The utility thesis, stated carefully, was always that ledger adoption would eventually require the asset at scale. Japan is proving the adoption half at a pace no other country matches, and leaving the requirement half exactly as unproven as it was.

The honest framing is that Japan has built the world’s best answer to the wrong question, if the question is next quarter’s price, and the world’s only serious answer to the right one, if the question is whether XRP’s infrastructure ever hosts a real economy. Both questions have constituencies, and they talk past each other daily.

The lonely experiment The sharpest fact about the SBI empire is its solitude. Nothing comparable exists in the United States, where XRP’s 2026 story is entirely financial, ETFs, escrow, and litigation memories. Nothing comparable exists in Europe, where Ripple’s presence is licenses without a champion. The model requires a specific, rare configuration: a large domestic financial group with equity in Ripple, a regulator with clear token frameworks, and an executive willing to spend a decade on it. Japan had all three. No second country currently has two.

The near-misses elsewhere underline how demanding the recipe is. The Gulf states have friendly regulators and sovereign capital, but no domestic conglomerate has married its balance sheet to the token; Ripple’s licenses there are doors without a house behind them. Korea has retail enthusiasm and, soon, won-denominated stablecoins, but its regulatory posture toward foreign-token infrastructure remains cautious, and its chaebol have their own chains to champion. The United States has the ETFs and now the legal clarity, but American institutions buy exposure, not plumbing; nobody is issuing licensed consumer money on XRPL between the coasts. Each jurisdiction supplies one ingredient. Only Japan supplies all three, and it took ten years even there.

That solitude cuts both ways. It makes Japan the indispensable proof case, the one jurisdiction the utility thesis can point to without hedging. It also makes the thesis fragile in a way believers rarely price: a strategy embodied in one conglomerate and one 70-something evangelist is a strategy with key-man and key-country risk. If the SBI experiment stalls, succession, strategy drift, or simply the gravitational pull of that Fasset-style multi-network hedging, there is no second Japan behind it.

For now, the experiment is accelerating, not stalling: three new licensed pillars in a single spring, a consumer market of $200 billion newly addressable, and a shareholder base literally paid in the token. Whether that ever moves a chart is the question the rest of the XRP world obsesses over. Japan, characteristically, is not waiting for the answer. It is issuing the next token and the one after that.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 6, 2026.

XRP may be showing early signs of a shift in momentum in its monthly RSI from a downtrend to an uptrend after months of persistent weakness.

This is according to a market outlook from EGRAG Crypto, a prominent market analyst. In an X post on July 5, he noted that the latest move is not simply another short-term bounce, but the start of a distribution phase targeting higher levels for the monthly XRP RSI.

In the commentary, EGRAG highlighted a macro momentum pattern that has appeared during previous XRP market cycles. He also identified how the monthly RSI briefly slipped below a historically important support zone. 

XRP Fell Below Historic RSI Support Zone EGRAG stated that the RSI fell to the 40 region, an area it has not visited before in its history. This happened in June, when XRP’s RSI fell to a low of 40.59.

This saw the altcoin’s oscillator break below a historic support zone that has repeatedly coincided with major cycle bottoms. In previous market cycles, the indicator formed a clear 1-2-3 bottoming structure before momentum shifted higher. The monthly RSI retests the support level around 43.66 three times, forms a durable bottom, then starts to recover higher.

In the first circle, the monthly RSI dipped to 44.25, forming 1 in December 2019, then fell to 43.75 in March 2020, forming 2. It then concluded the accumulation with a final dip to 44.01 in June 2020. 

During the second circle, the XRP oscillator dipped to 43.90 in June 2022, 43.95 in August 2022, and 44.42 in December 2022. This formed the 1, 2, and 3 bottoming patterns, respectively.

XRP Monthly Oscillator/EGRAG Crypto This time, however, the oscillator dropped below that historical range. Rather than viewing the move as outright bearish, EGRAG believes the steeper dip may represent a temporary deviation designed to shake out weaker market participants before momentum begins recovering. EGRAG called this the manipulation phase.

Notably, the oscillator is rebounding after touching the 40 region, currently sitting at 42.5. The recovery suggests that momentum is starting to shift back to positive.

XRP RSI Following the AMD Model Meanwhile, EGRAG further discussed the current development with the application of the Accumulation, Manipulation, and Distribution (AMD) model. He noted that this model can also apply to the monthly oscillator instead of price analysis alone.

According to the analyst, the expected accumulation phase was around the historical support zone, but the XRP RSI broke below it. That was the manipulation, which he believes precedes a decisive break higher.

For this to happen, EGRAG outlined several important levels. A recovery above 43.66 would represent the first sign of improving momentum, while clearing 46.50 would strengthen the bullish case. However, the analyst views a monthly close above the 50 level as the most significant confirmation that XRP’s macro momentum has shifted.

Notably, a rising RSI, especially on higher timeframes, shows that upside momentum is returning to the market. Such a scenario would have bullish implications for the XRP price, potentially sending it higher.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Cardano (ADA) price is down by 4% today, July 6, to trade at $0.18 at the time of writing. This drop makes ADA the biggest loser among the top ten largest cryptos by market cap as ongoing long liquidations weigh on the price.

But amid the ongoing decline, Charles Hoskinson has mapped out how Cardano is going to challenge the XRP Ledger in terms of speed, a plan that could aid ADA’s price recovery if it pans out.

Hoskinson Says Cardano Will Match XRPL’s Speed After Leios Hoskinson was speaking in an interview with David Gokhshtein, where he said that the Leios upgrade will increase the speed of the Cardano network by 60 times, and this could make it as fast as the XRP Ledger.

“Leios will be a 60X in terms of throughput inside the system. So, we’re good. We’re as performant as XRP. We’re okay,” Hoskinson said.

In the same interview, Hoskinson admitted that Leios could bring more users to Cardano, and this will increase the network’s Total Value Locked (TVL) as well as the transaction volumes.

Prior to this interview, Hoskinson had warned that the DeFi TVL on Cardano could collapse if the governance members do not vote to approve the upgrades. His sentiments came after two projects on Cardano: TapTools and JPG Store, shut down.

Cardano Price Outlook as Bears Defend 50-day SMA Resistance The price of Cardano has gained by 28% from $0.14 on June 30 to $0.18 on July 6. But this uptrend paused when the price reached the 50-day SMA resistance of $0.188.

Cardano needs to move above this resistance and make three straight closes above it for the uptrend that began on June 30 to continue.

The RSI reading of 59 supports a bullish long-term Cardano price forecast because it suggests that bulls have a good grip.

If ADA moves above $0.18, the next target for price will be the 100-day SMA level of $0.23.

ADA/USDT 1-day Chart (Source: TradingView) However, if selling pressure increases because of some traders booking profits after the price rose by 28% in seven days, ADA could drop to the support level of $0.15.

Cardano’s Long/Short Ratio Surges as Traders Flip Bearish on Price Data from Coinglass shows that Cardano’s long/short ratio has dropped to 0.88. This is the lowest point that this ratio has dropped to since June 30.

This declining ratio suggests that many traders are betting that the price of Cardano will drop after its rise paused at the 50-day SMA level of $0.18.

Cardano Long/Short Ratio (Source: Coinglass) Cardano’s open interest has also dropped by 10% today, July 6, to $460 million at the time of writing. This drop comes after $1.42 million in long liquidations.

The declining OI and the long liquidations are creating room for short sellers to dominate the Cardano market. But this could end up making the price rise if spot buyers return and push Cardano higher, forcing the short sellers to also buy in order to close their positions.

Cardano DeFi TVL Sheds 104M ADA Data from DeFiLlama shows that the TVL on the Cardano network has dropped from 566 million ADA on June 30 to 462 million on July 6.

Cardano DeFi Activity This TVL has shed 104 million ADA within one week, and these unlocked tokens could find their way back into circulation and add to the bearish headwinds that are facing Cardano price.

The DEX volumes on Cardano have also seen a similar decline, after moving from $12 million on July 4 to $$982,000 on July 6.

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Bitcoin exchange-traded funds are now logging their eighth week of uninterrupted net outflows, even as rival products tied to Solana, XRP, and the lesser-known HYPE token pulled in fresh demand. According to flow data compiled by WuBlockchain, spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $527 million for the week running June 29 through July 2. Spot Ethereum funds did not fare much better, recording $13.67 million in net redemptions over the same stretch, also their eighth losing week in a row. The divergence is not only persistent but also widening. Two months ago, altcoin ETF flows were negligible; now, they are a consistent feature of the weekly reckoning.

The numbers for Solana and XRP ETFs told a different story. They attracted $5.75 million and $17.19 million respectively. The HYPE ETF, tied to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, pulled in $4.32 million. While these inflows are nowhere near the size of the capital that left Bitcoin products, they mark a notable shift at a time when the oldest and largest crypto asset appears stuck in a holding pattern.

A rotation narrative is taking hold For most of the year, Bitcoin ETF flows were a reasonably reliable barometer of risk appetite across the crypto spectrum. That signal is now muddy. ETF investors are not simply fleeing crypto altogether. Rather, the flow picture points to a repositioning into assets that are perceived to offer more upside or are riding specific narrative catalysts. XRP, for example, has seen renewed attention tied to payment use cases and legal developments, while Solana continues to attract developers and capital despite on-and-off network congestion concerns. Neither Solana nor XRP ETFs are close to the asset levels of their Bitcoin and Ethereum counterparts, but the direction matters. For the first time in months, the flow data suggests that crypto ETF investors are differentiating between asset classes rather than treating everything as a correlated trade.

The shift coincides with a broader altcoin renaissance visible in spot markets. Several altcoins posted massive weekly gains recently—including TON, which surged more than 80%—as documented in BlockchainReporter’s weekly gainers roundup. That performance is likely feeding into ETF flow decisions, however indirectly, as traders look for products that capture a piece of that momentum.

Regulatory headwinds keep BTC and ETH in check Part of the weakness in the two largest crypto ETFs can be traced back to Washington. The industry has been breathing nervously ahead of a Senate vote on what many consider the most significant piece of crypto legislation in US history. In a late-stage twist, major banking interests are pushing to derail the bill just days before the scheduled vote, seeking to reopen compromises that had been tentatively agreed upon. The situation, covered in depth by BlockchainReporter, has injected fresh uncertainty into a market that had started to price in more favorable regulatory treatment.

Bitcoin and Ethereum, as the most institutionally held digital assets, are naturally more exposed to legislative risk than newer, less liquid alternatives. When regulatory clarity stalls, the needle does not move for large allocators who need that clarity before adding to positions. Altcoin ETFs, on the other hand, attract a different type of buyer—one willing to take on additional risk for a potentially asymmetric payoff. The current flow split reflects that difference in investor profile.

Institutions are still building infrastructure It would be a mistake to interpret the persistent outflows from BTC and ETH ETFs as a retreat from the asset class by institutions. If anything, the pace of large-scale blockchain integration is accelerating. As reported recently, Bullish acquired Equiniti for $4.2 billion, Ondo Finance settled a tokenized Treasury trade with JPMorgan, and total on-chain real-world assets crossed $20 billion—all detailed in a BlockchainReporter weekly roundup. These developments suggest that the pipes are being laid even if spot ETF demand has temporarily cooled for the majors.

What the flow data ultimately shows is a market in transition. Bitcoin ETF outflows lasting two full months are not a trivial signal, but they are also not a death knell. The fact that capital is finding its way into smaller, more targeted crypto products—while macro and regulatory clouds hover—indicates that the investor base is evolving. Whether the next catalyst is a favorable Senate vote, a Federal Reserve shift, or simply a technical breakout in Bitcoin price, the pieces are in place for a rapid reversal. For now, however, the trend line for BTC and ETH funds points downward, and the market is watching to see how long that gravity can hold.

AUTHOR

Kester is an experienced freelance content writer. His focus is primarily on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. One might even refer to him as a "blockchain enthusiast." He has been following advancements in the crypto and blockchain area for several years, researching and writing his insights in the media. In addition to being a skilled content writer, Mushumir is also knowledgeable in SEO and digital marketing. He aspires to succeed as a content creator in the digital realm, dealing with customers in the finance and tech industries to generate traffic through engaging taglines and content. Mushumir enjoys traveling, reading, and playing cricket when he is not writing. He now works as a news and article writer for BlockchainReporter.

On Sunday, July 5, 2026, XRP witnessed a decline on the daily chart, prompting market participants to focus on key support zones highlighted in the weekly outlook and to track fresh technical signals. Experts say the token is at a major decision point after a period of tightening displayed by the Super Guppy indicator.

A crucial range stands out in the technical outlookAt the time of writing, XRP is trading at $1.13. In the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency lost 3.21% of its value, while its trading volume has dropped to $1.14 billion. According to CoinMarketCap data, this signals a dramatic 43.3% decrease in daily volume. Despite this, XRP’s seven-day gain stands at 8.75%. The asset is known for its central role in the Ripple ecosystem, widely used in cross-border payments.

Egrag Crypto, a closely-followed market analyst, suggests that XRP may be preparing for a new phase of expansion. He notes that on the weekly chart, the Super Guppy indicator has shifted from a strong green expansion mode to a mixed, gray compression zone, signifying that momentum is fading and the market is entering a more cautious phase.

Egrag Crypto emphasizes that if the $0.80 to $1.10 range holds, the current market structure remains valid, but a breakdown below this band would significantly damage the overall picture.

According to the analyst, the $0.80 to $1.10 band is at the core of the current structure. As long as XRP trades within this range, the technical framework is considered intact. For an upward scenario, XRP needs to maintain support, recover above the red moving average zone, and see the Guppy indicator return to a green expansion phase.

If a new expansion signal emerges, Egrag Crypto sees possible targets at $3.59, then between $6.73 and $9.17, $16.36, and potentially as high as $53.86 in an extended price cycle.

The $1.20 level is key for reducing riskMeanwhile, another analyst, ChartNerd, highlights a different signal on the weekly chart which supports a bearish view. According to him, XRP is close to a “death cross” between the 20-week exponential moving average and the 200-week simple moving average—historically a pattern seen during downturn phases.

ChartNerd points out that the 200-week simple moving average now sits at the $1.20 level. Should the price reclaim this region, it could act as a ceiling for supply and would be a crucial sign that downside risk is easing.

Recalling previous cases, ChartNerd notes that after a death cross in 2022, XRP hit a bottom within one week, while in the 2018–2020 cycle, bottom formation took six months to play out.

The analyst interprets historical patterns as indicating that, within a cycle stretching from June through the end of 2026, XRP could set a low somewhere around $0.90 or $0.70. Nevertheless, in the short term, the $1 level remains closely watched as a potential local bottom.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP) began the week on a constructive note after surging over 6%, 13% and 10% in the previous week. BTC holds steady around $63,500, ETH approaches a key technical resistance at $1,800, while XRP has broken above the upper boundary of a falling channel, strengthening the bullish outlook.

Bitcoin could extend gains if it closes above the $64,000 resistance zoneBitcoin price trades at $63,500 on Monday after surging over 6% in the previous week. BTC is maintaining a capped bias as price remains below the 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs), all of which sit well above spot. 

The immediate ceiling is the horizontal level around $64,004, with the 50-day EMA near $65,763 adding to overhead supply further up, while the longer-term 100-day and 200-day EMAs near $69,469 and $75,427 respectively, reinforce a broader bearish structure despite a modestly positive Relative Strength Index (RSI) around 51 and a firmly positive Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), which hint at improving but still constrained momentum.

On the topside, a break above the nearby horizontal resistance at $64,004 would open the door toward the 50-day EMA at $65,763, followed by the 100-period EMA at $69,469 and the 200-day EMA at $75,427, before the more distant horizontal barrier around $84,410 comes into focus. 

On the downside, the absence of clearly defined nearby supports in the provided data suggests that any renewed selling below $63,554 would rely on emerging price action and lower historical lows to attract dip-buying interest rather than on pre-identified structural floors.

Ethereum nears the 50-day EMAEthereum price trades at $1,784 on Monday, up over 13% in the previous week. ETH maintains a bearish bias as it remains below a stack of key EMAs. Price is capped first by the 50-day EMA near $1,806, with the 100-day EMA around $1,972 and the 200-day EMA near $2,241 reinforcing the broader overhead supply zone. 

Momentum, however, is improving, with the RSI hovering near 57 and the MACD firmly positive, suggesting upside attempts may continue but will likely struggle while these EMAs remain intact above spot.

On the topside, immediate resistance is seen at the 50-day EMA around $1,806, followed by the 100-day EMA near $1,972 and the horizontal barrier at $2,000, before the longer-term 200-day EMA up toward $2,242.

On the downside, the nearest meaningful structural support is the horizontal level around $1,385, where buyers previously emerged, with any decline toward that zone likely to test the resolve of the nascent recovery despite the currently constructive momentum backdrop.

XRP closes above the upper boundary of the falling channelXRP trades at $1.148 on Monday after rallying over 10% and breaking above the upper boundary of the falling channel in the previous week. However, XRP maintains a broadly bearish configuration, with price holding below the 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day EMAs, clustered between roughly $1.180 and $1.500, keeping the medium-term trend capped despite a modest rebound from recent lows. 

Momentum is improving, with the RSI hovering just above the 50 line and the MACD in positive territory, suggesting a corrective recovery within a still-dominant downside structure.

On the topside, immediate resistance aligns with the 50-day EMA near $1.183, followed by the 100-day EMA around $1.286 and the horizontal barrier at $1.300, with the 200-day EMA near $1.495 and the prior resistance line around $1.900 reinforcing a broader supply zone higher up. 

On the downside, initial support emerges at the lower parallel-channel region around $1.110, where a break would expose further weakness, while holding above this area would allow buyers to keep testing the nearby moving-average ceiling.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)

Cryptocurrency prices FAQs Token launches influence demand and adoption among market participants. Listings on crypto exchanges deepen the liquidity for an asset and add new participants to an asset’s network. This is typically bullish for a digital asset.

A hack is an event in which an attacker captures a large volume of the asset from a DeFi bridge or hot wallet of an exchange or any other crypto platform via exploits, bugs or other methods. The exploiter then transfers these tokens out of the exchange platforms to ultimately sell or swap the assets for other cryptocurrencies or stablecoins. Such events often involve an en masse panic triggering a sell-off in the affected assets.

Macroeconomic events like the US Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates influence crypto assets mainly through the direct impact they have on the US Dollar. An increase in interest rate typically negatively influences Bitcoin and altcoin prices, and vice versa. If the US Dollar index declines, risk assets and associated leverage for trading gets cheaper, in turn driving crypto prices higher.

Halvings are typically considered bullish events as they slash the block reward in half for miners, constricting the supply of the asset. At consistent demand if the supply reduces, the asset’s price climbs.

Leading cryptocurrencies gained alongside stock futures on Sunday as investors braced for the release of the Federal Reserve’s June meeting minutes.

Crypto Market LiftsBitcoin spiked late evening, nearly breaking $64,000, as trading volume increased marginally. Ethereum broke through $1,800, with a 41% jumpe in 24-hour volume, while XRP and Dogecoin inched higher.

Over $160 million was liquidated from the cryptocurrency market in the last 24 hours, with $108 million in bearish short positions, according to Coinglass data.

Bitcoin’s open interest rose 1.21% over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, retail and whale derivatives traders remained net long on the apex cryptocurrency.

"Extreme Fear" sentiment prevailed in the market, according to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.

Top Gainers (24 Hours) 

The global cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.13 trillion, representing a 2.39% increase over the last 24 hours.

Stocks Futures RiseStock futures edged higher overnight on Sunday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures rose 82 points, or 0.15%, as of 8:45 p.m. EDT.  Futures tied to the S&P 500 spiked 0.54%, while Nasdaq 100 Futures rallied 1.36%.

Eyes will be on the Federal Reserve this week as traders await the minutes of the June meeting, the first chaired by new Chairman Kevin Warsh, which are due on Wednesday. The central bank kept the federal funds rate steady in a target range of 3.50% to 3.75%

Macro Pullback Phase?“Stablecoin contraction historically reflects a macro pullback phase, as active capital is redeemed for fiat or sidelined during broad market corrections,” the analyst stated.

Michaël van de Poppe, another popular cryptocurrency commentator, expressed optimism for a “shallow” BTC correction followed by a swift rebound, viewing it as the catalyst to reclaim the 200-week moving average, around approximately $62,500-$62,600, and exit the bearish price action.

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After rising from the $1.05 support zone, XRP is making one of its best attempts at recovery in weeks. The asset has quickly gained momentum and is currently testing the region surrounding the 50-day EMA, which has served as a ceiling during the current decline. 

Despite the recovery, XRP's technical market structure is still bearish. The asset broke out of a descending triangle pattern earlier in the year, and it spent the majority of June setting lower highs and lower lows. But the recent surge has raised the RSI above 50, indicating that bullish momentum is at last coming back. The 50-day moving average, which is close to $1.19, is the important level to monitor. 

XRP/USDT Chart by TradingViewThe first significant technical win for bulls in months would come from a breakout above this resistance, which could pave the way to the $1.28 area, where the 100-day EMA is currently located. The longer-term downtrend structure would then provide more resistance for XRP. The recovery has seen an increase in volume, which gives the move more legitimacy. 

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However, once XRP hits significant resistance levels, buyers still have to demonstrate that they can maintain demand. XRP may swiftly return to support at $1.10 if the current rally stalls below the 50-day EMA. Momentum is currently in favor of the bulls, but confirmation is still required before discussing a more significant trend reversal. 

Shiba Inu is a weak linkDespite a slight recovery from recent lows, Shiba Inu is still among the weakest large-cap coins on the market. After recovering from a selloff that brought it near the crucial $0.0000040 support level, the meme coin is currently trading close to $0.0000043. The big picture is still negative. 

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Sellers continue to dominate the market as SHIB continues to trade below its 50-, 100-, and 200-day moving averages. The asset broke out of a rising wedge formation earlier this year, and the subsequent decline indicated that the long-term downtrend would continue. Over the past few days, SHIB has avoided a total collapse thanks to the emergence of a small recovery structure. 

The RSI is getting closer to neutral levels after rising from oversold territory, indicating that selling pressure is lessening. However, the bounce remains relatively weak compared to previous recovery attempts. Near $0.0000049, the location of the 50-day EMA, is the first significant barrier. Bulls must reclaim the significant psychological barrier at $0.0000050 above that in order to alter market sentiment. 

SHIB runs the risk of turning the current rebound into another lower high in the absence of greater volume. The token may return to the $0.0000040 support zone if buyers are unable to break through nearby resistance. However, a breakout above $0.0000050 would greatly enhance the technical outlook and might even start a more extensive recovery phase. 

Bitcoin's attempt to regain strengthAfter one of the biggest selloffs in recent months, Bitcoin is making an effort to rebound. Before buyers intervened and sparked a relief rally, Bitcoin fell toward the $58,000–$60,000 support zone following a breakdown from the $80,000 region. Bitcoin has returned above the 20-day EMA as a result of the rebound, indicating that short-term momentum is strengthening. 

The overall technical picture is still difficult, though. The 50-day and 100-day moving averages, which are located close to $66,700 and $69,500, respectively, are still above BTC. These levels are now the main cluster of resistance that bulls have to get past. The recent rebound also comes after a sharp upward trend that propelled Bitcoin through April and the first part of May was declared invalid. 

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Selling pressure increased after that trendline broke, resulting in a series of liquidations that altered the structure of the market. Early signs of improvement are being seen in momentum indicators. After spending some time in oversold territory, the RSI has recovered toward the neutral 50 zone, indicating that bearish pressure is subsiding. 

However, buyers still have to demonstrate that the recovery has sufficient strength, as the indicator is still far from overbought conditions. Watching the $66,000–$70,000 range is crucial. 

A breakout above that range would put Bitcoin back above its medium-term trend indicators and might lead to a move in the direction of the 200-day moving average at about $75,000. However, another test of the $60,000 support area might result if resistance is not overcome. Rather than a verified reversal, Bitcoin is stabilizing. Bulls still face formidable technical obstacles, but the recovery is encouraging.

Dogecoin bouncesAfter finding support around $0.070, Dogecoin is still trapped inside a larger bearish structure that has dominated trading all year. DOGE entered a sharp correction that drove the asset to new yearly lows after losing a significant rising support trendline that had been in place since February. The token's price is rising back toward the 20-day EMA as a result of the recent bounce, which has helped it regain some lost ground. 

DOGE/USDT Chart by TradingViewThe fact that Dogecoin is still below all of the major moving averages presents a challenge for bulls. The longer-term trend is still negative, as evidenced by the 50-day EMA near $0.088 and the 100-day EMA near $0.095, which both continue to slope downward. Oversold conditions, which frequently precede relief rallies, have begun to improve for the RSI. 

The indicator is getting closer to the neutral zone, indicating a short-term loss of control for sellers. Additionally, during the most recent rebound, volume has somewhat improved, lending the move more legitimacy. The first significant level of resistance is located between $0.080 and $0.088. 

The psychological $0.10 level is probably the next target if DOGE is successful in regaining that area. After months of weakness, sentiment would considerably improve with such a move. On the downside, DOGE may return to the recent support level at $0.070 if momentum is lost. Dogecoin still needs a clear breakout above its moving averages before a sustainable trend reversal can be verified, even though the current bounce is encouraging.

XRP traded near $1.13 on July 5, according to crypto.news market data. The token was down 1.04% over 24 hours but remained up 7.79% over seven days. Its market cap stood near $70.26 billion, while 24-hour volume was about $1.67 billion.

Summary

XRP’s current price near $1.13 keeps the token below the key $1.20 weekly average. A weekly death cross could turn the 200-week SMA from support into future resistance. Crypto.news analysis keeps $1.10, $1.20 and $1.40 as key levels for XRP traders. The price remains close to a key technical zone after a short recovery from the $1 area. XRP has moved back above short-term support, but it has not reclaimed the higher resistance area near $1.20.

A post from ChartNerd warned that XRP is close to printing a weekly 20 EMA and 200-week SMA death cross. The analyst said the 200-week SMA near $1.20 may turn from a support floor into a supply ceiling.

$XRP is on the verge of printing a 20EMA/200SMA weekly deathcross.

The 200-week SMA ($1.20) now has the potential to flip from a historical support floor into a supply ceiling during future rallies. It must be reclaimed to invalidate such a scenario. Here is what history has… https://t.co/Okcc0bSeo0 pic.twitter.com/ygc8i6DFi1

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) July 5, 2026 That level now matters because price remains below it. A weekly close above $1.20 would weaken the bearish case. Failure to reclaim it may keep sellers active during future rallies.

Weekly death cross keeps traders cautious A death cross happens when a shorter moving average falls below a longer moving average. In this case, the focus is on the weekly 20 EMA and the 200-week SMA.

The signal does not confirm an instant drop by itself. It shows that medium-term momentum has weakened against the long-term trend. Traders often watch how price reacts after the cross appears.

ChartNerd said “the 200-week SMA ($1.20) now has the potential to flip from a historical support floor into a supply ceiling.” The analyst added that XRP must reclaim that area to reject the bearish setup.

The analyst also pointed to two past examples. In 2022, XRP formed a bottom shortly after a similar signal. In the 2018 to 2020 bear market, the final low came months later after repeated failures near the 200-week SMA.

Daily chart shows short-term recovery The XRP/USDT daily chart still shows a broader downtrend, with lower highs from May into late June. The token recently bounced from the lower Bollinger Band near $1 and moved back above the middle band.

The latest candle is red near $1.1325, showing a pullback after the rebound. Price remains between the middle Bollinger Band near $1.1064 and the upper band near $1.2094.

Holding above $1.1064 keeps the short-term recovery alive. A drop below that level would weaken the bounce and bring the $1.00 to $1.03 area back into focus.

The MACD has improved, with the MACD line above the signal line and a positive histogram. Still, both lines remain below zero. That means momentum is recovering, but the wider trend has not fully turned.

Source: TradingView

Crypto.news data keeps $1.20 in focus Crypto.news reported on July 3 that XRP climbed to a three-day high after Ripple’s European expansion and a fresh Supertrend buy signal. The report said XRP moved from around $1.02 on July 1 to an intraday high near $1.11.

A separate crypto.news analysis said XRP needed to reclaim $1.20 to $1.25 to support a stronger rebound. It also placed $1.10 as a key support level and warned that wider weakness could bring $0.90 and $0.80 back into view.

The same report said a monthly close above $1.40 would help confirm a stronger double-bottom case. Until then, XRP remains in a cautious zone, even after the recent rebound.

At press time, traders are watching three levels. XRP must hold $1.10 to protect the short-term bounce, reclaim $1.20 to weaken the death cross warning, and clear $1.40 to improve the larger structure.

This week in the crypto world was nothing short of eventful. From XRP’s surprising 70% crash despite Ripple’s positive strides to former President Donald Trump’s defense of his billion-dollar crypto income, the news was buzzing.

The SEC’s push to make the U.S. the “Crypto Capital of the World” also made headlines, as did the rapid adoption of stablecoin payment rails and the market’s “extreme fear,” causing leading cryptocurrencies to slide.

Let’s dive into the details.

XRP’s Unexpected CrashDespite Ripple’s consistent institutional deals, regulatory victories, and ETF inflows, XRP experienced a shocking 70% crash from its peak of $3.65 in July 2025. This collapse occurred even as investors anticipated a regulatory reversal following Trump’s election, which had previously caused XRP to surge from $0.49 to $3.39 in just a few weeks.

Read the full article here.

Trump Defends His Crypto IncomeFormer President Donald Trump defended his billion-dollar cryptocurrency windfall, asserting there was nothing “illegal” or “wrong” about it. In an interview with CNBC, Trump emphasized the importance of cryptocurrency and reiterated his longstanding position that the U.S. must lead in the space or risk ceding dominance to China.

Read the full article here.

SEC’s Push For US Crypto DominanceSEC Chair Paul Atkins announced that the agency is moving “purposely” to support Trump’s goal of making the U.S. the “Crypto Capital of the World.” Through Project Crypto, a joint regulatory initiative led by the SEC and the CFTC, the agency has taken “historic steps” to modernize regulations for on-chain markets.

Read the full article here.

Rapid Adoption Of Stablecoin Payment RailsThe Kobeissi Letter highlighted a significant spike in cryptocurrency card deposits, connecting the jump to growing stablecoin adoption. Cumulative card deposits exceeded $10 billion for the first time in June, an 82% increase year-to-date and more than tripled in a year.

Read the full article here.

Leading Cryptocurrencies Slide Amid Market FearLeading cryptocurrencies reversed course amid negative market sentiment. Bitcoin pulled back to about $58,000 after Monday’s surge, while Ethereum traded around the $1,500 level. XRP and Dogecoin also slipped modestly. Nearly $250 million was liquidated from the cryptocurrency market in the last 24 hours.

Read the full article here.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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Talk of a new altcoin cycle is starting to pick up again.

Based on how this week has played out, that narrative is beginning to gain traction. On the weekly timeframe, while Bitcoin [BTC] is up more than 5%, Ethereum [ETH] has attracted 2x the capital inflows, pushing the ETH/BTC ratio up nearly 7%. More importantly, this marks the ratio’s strongest weekly gain since August 2025, reinforcing the idea that “altcoin-led” momentum is starting to build across the market.

Ripple hasn’t been left behind. As the chart below shows, the token is up nearly 9% this week, with its highest wick reaching $1.18, a level it hadn’t reclaimed since losing it in mid-June. That move points to strong buying interest as capital continues rotating into higher-beta altcoins.

Source: TradingView (XRP/USDT) Backing this up, the XRP/USDT ratio has also climbed more than 3% this week.

Against this backdrop, leaning long on XRP isn’t a stretch. In fact, an analyst recently flagged a whale opening a $16 million XRP long at an average entry of $1.10. At the time of writing, the position was already sitting on roughly $477,000 in unrealized profit.

With altcoin momentum continuing to build, this doesn’t look like a random high-leverage bet. If anything, it signals growing conviction that XRP still has room to move higher as capital continues rotating into altcoins. That naturally raises the question: Is XRP’s current setup quietly turning into a textbook bear trap?

XRP’s leverage spike puts the $1 level under the spotlight  Long positioning in XRP is starting to go parabolic.

Normally, when leverage gets this crowded on the long side, the risk of a volatility event increases. Even a modest shift in sentiment can trigger a wave of long liquidations, especially with XRP still trading around the $1 supply zone. In that scenario, the ongoing altcoin rally alone may not be enough to keep the uptrend intact.

That’s why the case for a near-term pullback is gaining traction, with liquidity continuing to stack up around the $1  level. But institutional positioning paints a different picture, suggesting XRP’s latest move isn’t just riding the broader market’s altcoin momentum.

Source: SoSoValue As the chart above shows, it’s been another strong week for spot XRP ETFs.

According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot Ripple ETFs recorded $17.19 million in inflows over the period. This came despite two days of net outflows during the week, showing demand remained resilient. More notably, the ETFs have now logged nine consecutive weeks of net inflows, pointing to “sustained” institutional interest.

By contrast, Ethereum ETFs have posted consecutive net outflows over the same period. This divergence could set XRP apart from other altcoins. In simple terms, while ETH is leading short-term gains, it still looks driven by capital rotation. 

XRP, on the other hand, is showing stronger longer-term momentum, making its consolidation around $1 look more like a potential bear trap, with long positioning adding to the bullish pressure. 

Final Summary Altcoins are gaining momentum, with ETH and XRP both seeing strong weekly inflows and price gains. Even with heavy long leverage near $1, steady XRP ETF inflows suggest demand is still strong and a bear trap is possible.

XRP and Bitcoin Price outlook improved this week as traders returned to major crypto assets. Bitcoin price rose over $62,000 and briefly topped $63,000, the highest point in two weeks. XRP also gained nearly 10% over seven days, while trading around $1.13. 

The rally came after less aggressive jobs data, which alleviated inflation concerns and favored risk demand.

CLARITY Act Progress Faces Senate Timing Test Senator Cynthia Lummis repressed efforts to push the CLARITY Act. The bill aims to introduce more transparent regulations to digital asset markets in the United States.

The measure has passed the House and cleared the Senate Banking Committee. Nevertheless, it has yet to receive a Senate vote, which would bring it closer to legislation.

July has turned out to be significant as the Senate has a limited policy window before August recess. The bill might have a longer journey to 2027 should lawmakers take a long time in taking action.

Lummis has provided an opportunity to have a final review of revised bill text, as well. It was reported that the updated version was likely to come around July 4.

Source: Polymarket cap Polymarket shows a 51% chance the CLARITY Act becomes law in 2026, down 14%, with $1.52 million volume overall today.

XRP and Bitcoin Price Outlook  The movement of XRP and Bitcoin Price is now based on macro data and policy momentum. The next market signal the traders will be monitoring is the U.S inflation figures.

Bitcoin long-term prediction needs to hold above $62,000 to keep short-term buyers active. A more robust breakout of the above $63,500 would open space to reach $65,000.

Source: TradingView However, fresh selling may return if Bitcoin loses the $60,000 support area. That would undermine the recovery and retard the greater market confidence.

XRP is among the most robust large-cap tokens following its weekly upswing. Another push to $1.20 may be backed by a hold higher than 1.10.

Nonetheless, XRP could experience pressure in the event of slow Senate progress or the loss of market volume. The CLARITY Act is one of the primary drivers of digital assets.

Bitcoin ETF Inflows Hit $221M as XRP Demand Grows The price trends of XRP and Bitcoin remained stable as the U.S. spot ETFs demand was active again on July 2. 

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw daily net inflows of $221.72 million with cumulative inflows of $51.08 billion. The value traded was total of $2.13 billion, and net assets were approximately $74.37 billion.

The FBTC of Fidelity started the Bitcoin inflows with $165.90 million, and Ark 21Shares with $91.84 million. Nevertheless, BlackRock IBIT had a daily outflow of $40.43 million with a net asset of $44.91 billion.

Sosovalue data Meanwhile, U.S. XRP spot ETFs recorded a net inflow of $6.55 million each day. They had a cumulative net inflow of 1.49 billion, and total assets of approximately 987.91 million.

Bitwise’s XRP fund led activity with $6.55 million in inflows. The data indicate that ETF demand is positive prior to CLARITY Act changes.

Gareth Soloway, chief market strategist at VerifiedInvesting.com, says the crypto market has entered a meaningful short-term recovery phase, but warns that the bigger bear market trend has not yet ended and further downside remains likely later in the year.

Bitcoin: $73,000 to $74,000 in Sight, But Sub-$50,000 Still Possible

Bitcoin rallied from around $57,800 back to approximately $62,700 and Soloway believes the move has further room to run. His near-term target sits at the $73,000 to $74,000 range, where a key downsloping trend line provides resistance. As long as Bitcoin holds above $58,000 on a confirmed closing basis, he is maintaining a bullish short-term bias.

However, Soloway was clear that this is a swing trade setup, not a reversal of the broader trend. He still expects Bitcoin to eventually break below $50,000 as part of the bear market’s final phase, which he describes as a bottoming process that typically takes the form of a rounded base or cup and handle structure. The trigger for that final flush, in his view, would be a broad risk-off event where capital exits everything, including crypto, gold, and biotech simultaneously.

Ethereum: Parallel Trend Line Breakout Targeting $2,000

Ethereum has broken out of an important trend line structure. He sees initial resistance around $1,800 but expects ETH to push through toward $2,000, where he would reassess. The breakout is notable because the trend lines on Ethereum are running parallel to Bitcoin’s structure, which he says signals order within the broader market chaos.

XRP: Wedge Break Could Mean More Upside

XRP broke out of a multi-month wedge pattern that stretched back to early 2025. The longer a wedge forms, Soloway argues, the larger the breakout move tends to be. XRP has already moved from around $1.02 to $1.17. He expects a pullback toward $1.10 to $1.15 before the next leg higher, targeting the $1.25 resistance zone as an exit point for his current trade.

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A Recurring Pattern in the DataFor traders watching the calendar, July has a habit of rewarding altcoin holders. Historical price data highlighted by @BSCNews shows that $LINK has averaged a gain of +15.8% during the month, closing green in six of the past eight Julys. $ADA has averaged +11.2% over the same period, finishing in positive territory in six of the last nine years, including a +29.3% move last July. $XRP, meanwhile, has not printed a red July candle since 2020, according to The Crypto Basic.

These are not trivial sample sizes. Across three of the largest altcoins by market capitalisation, the data points to a consistent seasonal tendency that has persisted through multiple market cycles, including both bear and bull years.

Broader Market Context Adds WeightThe seasonal case for altcoins this July is not standing alone. The Altcoin Season Index crossed 75 on July 8, with 36 out of the top 50 altcoins gaining over 25% in the past 90 days, while the total altcoin market cap found support near $1.05 trillion on July 5 before rebounding. According to CoinMarketCap, a reading above 75 on that index, meaning 75% of the top 100 coins outperforming Bitcoin over the prior 90 days, is the standard definition of altcoin season.

Capital rotation dynamics are also shifting. Bitcoin dominance shows Bitcoin's share of total crypto market capitalisation, and declining dominance often precedes strong altcoin performance as capital rotates into smaller alternatives. That rotation appears to be underway.

As always, seasonal patterns are a guide, not a guarantee. Past performance tells you what has happened, not what will. Risk management remains essential, and broader macro conditions, regulatory developments, and liquidity can all override any historical tendency. But for $LINK, $ADA, and $XRP, July has historically earned its reputation.

Sources:
CoinMarketCap Altcoin Season Index
BeInCrypto: Altcoin Boom in July? Historical Patterns Suggest a Breakout Is Coming
CoinTrust: What is Altcoin Season? When is Altseason in July 2025?

Multiple networks move at onceIn the span of just two weeks, three major blockchain projects have taken concrete steps toward quantum-resistant infrastructure. @trondao deployed post-quantum signatures on testnet, @NEARProtocol shipped quantum security as part of its 2.13 upgrade, and the $XRP Ledger continued advancing a structured, multi-phase post-quantum roadmap. The moves reflect a broader shift across the industry: networks are no longer waiting for a cryptographic emergency to begin hardening their systems.

NEAR Protocol's upgrade 2.13 adds FIPS-204, a NIST-approved signature scheme built to withstand quantum attacks. NEAR's account model, controlled by rotatable access keys, enables a seamless rotation to quantum-safe signing. The protocol-level upgrade is designed to be transparent to users, meaning NEAR token holders and decentralized application users need take no action.

On the $XRP side, Ripple has introduced a multi-phase roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger for a post-quantum future, with a target for full readiness by 2028. The approach involves active testing of quantum-resistant cryptography and a hybrid rollout that runs alongside existing systems, with Ripple working alongside Project Eleven to accelerate development including validator testing and early custody prototypes. The roadmap also includes a contingency plan to enable a secure migration to quantum-safe accounts if current standards are compromised before the 2028 target.

Why the urgency now The push responds in part to research from Google Quantum AI suggesting that quantum computers could crack current blockchain cryptography with fewer resources and on a faster timeline than previously estimated, with some scenarios placing a credible threat window as early as 2032. If future quantum computers became capable of breaking current encryption standards, cryptocurrency wallets and blockchain infrastructure could face serious vulnerabilities, and although experts continue debating the timeline, many believe preparation must begin years before such systems become commercially viable.

Zcash's Tachyon upgrade is also targeting quantum readiness, according to CoinDesk Research, adding another major protocol to a list that is growing quickly. The broader crypto industry is grappling with the same problem at different speeds. Algorand integrated post-quantum state proofs as far back as 2022, while Bitcoin's debate remains largely at the discussion stage given the complexity of coordinating protocol changes across a decentralized network with no central team. The pattern is clear: projects with more centralized coordination are moving fastest, while the more decentralized networks face a longer road.

The industry's posture has shifted from reactive to proactive. Waiting for Q-Day, the theoretical moment when quantum computers can break current public-key cryptography, is no longer considered an acceptable strategy for infrastructure built to last decades.

Sources
Ripple: Post-Quantum Readiness on the XRP Ledger
CoinDesk: Ripple wants the XRP Ledger to be quantum-proof by 2028
CryptoWisser: NEAR Protocol Upgrade 2.13 is Live on Testnet

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

Travel platform Travala announced in a post on X that users can now book over 2.2 million hotels globally using XRP, in what it called a significant stride in crypto's adoption in everyday payments.

In a statement, Travala reiterated the original design intent of XRP as it was "built to move value fast," making its use for hotel bookings in line with that vision. The travel platform said users can now secure hotel bookings with instant confirmation and without the involvement of banks.

This development means XRP holders can pay for accommodation across a global hotel network, expanding XRP's use case into one of the largest consumer industries: travel and hospitality. As a result, users will be able to book over 3 million travel products globally with XRP on Travala.

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This new real-world payment integration highlights XRP's growing use case beyond trading markets.

XRP utility expands with paymentsIn a major milestone reached early this year, the x402 facilitator went live on the XRP Ledger in February, allowing AI agents to pay for services using XRP and RLUSD with no need for API keys or accounts.

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Agents can pay per request via x402, with volume settling on the XRP Ledger. Fast forward to the present, nearly a million agent transactions have settled through the XRPL x402 facilitator, implying more agents, merchants, and volume are entering the XRP Ledger.

Ripple is expanding XRP and RLUSD utility for AI-agent payments, having introduced the XRPL AI Starter Kit in June — a set of developer tools for building AI agents that can send payments on the XRP Ledger.

As AI agents begin transacting on behalf of businesses, Ripple has joined the ecosystem supporting Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines initiative, helping validate new use cases, establish common rules, and accelerate adoption while continuing to build the infrastructure for trusted agent-driven payments, with the XRP Ledger and RLUSD laying the foundation for the future of commerce.

The ETFs experienced something that hadn't happened in three months in the past week.

There seems to be a clear winner in terms of investors’ behavior toward crypto-based exchange-traded funds, and it’s not the two market leaders, BTC and ETH.

The financial vehicles tracking the performance of Ripple’s cross-border token continue to defy the overall market weakness with another week in the green. The HYPE ETFs also marked another positive week, but it was a significant decline from the previous one.

Ripple ETF Streak on Track After the impressive end to the previous business week, in which investors poured $15.63 million into the spot XRP ETFs on Friday, hopes for another strong start were high. And the numbers provided by SoSoValue show that reality wasn’t far away, as another $15.34 million entered the ETFs on Monday.

However, the trend changed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Net withdrawals dominated, with investors pulling out $2.83 million and $1.86 million, respectively. This was a rare occasion since the funds have not seen too many red days lately despite the broader ETFs’ trend. The last one was a month ago, on June 3.

Moreover, the last time when there were two consecutive days in the red was nearly three months ago, in early March. However, unlike the events back then, the tides reversed once again, as the funds saw $6.55 million net inflows on Thursday (the last trading day of the week due to the July 4 holiday).

Consequently, the week ended well in the green again, with net inflows of $17.19 million. Thus, the spectacular streak of green-only weeks continues, as the last one (barely) in the red was in late April/early May.

Spot XRP ETF Inflows. Source: SoSoValue Perhaps driven by the positive developments on the ETF scene, the underlying asset’s price has risen by over 8% in the past week and now sits close to $0.15.

You may also like: This XRP Signal Has Never Looked Worse, But is That the Setup? (Analyst) Is XRP Ready for a Reversal? Wallets Surge as FOMO Hits 3-Month Peak Crypto Analyst Challenges Ripple’s CEO Take on Strategy: ‘Two Giants, Same Model’ HYPE ETFs Also in the Green The HYPE ETFs also enjoyed the last full business week of June, seeing a massive net inflow of $111.36 million, which was by far the largest ever. Although the past four-day business week was also in the green, it was a lot more modest, with just $4.32 million entering the funds.

Nevertheless, the cumulative total net inflows sit at an all-time high of almost $300 million, despite the $3.01 million leaving the ETFs on Tuesday.

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One of the year's most dramatic spikes in activity occurred on the XRP Ledger, with payment volume momentarily surging by over 1,000% before collapsing nearly as quickly as it had appeared. The market's response indicates that investors were not persuaded, despite the fact that such spikes frequently spark conjecture about institutional adoption or renewed network demand. 

What's the foundation of a recovery?Transactions between accounts increased dramatically at the start of July, reaching levels well above the network's recent average, according to XRPL payment volume data. But within a matter of days, the metric nearly completely returned to baseline, negating the effect of the change and casting doubt on the true cause of the rise. 

XRP/USDT Chart by TradingViewLarge internal transfers rather than organic network growth could be the cause of the spike, according to one theory. In the past, large-scale fund transfers between recognized entities, treasury operations, and exchange wallet reorganization have all been linked to abrupt spikes in XRP Ledger payment activity. Without resulting in real adoption or new demand for XRP itself, such activity has the potential to significantly inflate payment statistics.  

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Breakout isn't fueled by paymentsXRP was unable to produce a significant breakout despite the increase in payment volume. Rather, the asset continues to trade below the 50-day and 100-day moving averages and is stuck below significant resistance levels. A stronger market reaction would typically be anticipated if the payment spike indicated actual demand entering the ecosystem. The overall state of the market is another factor. 

Investors seem hesitant to chase isolated on-chain metrics without confirmation from price, volume, and liquidity, and risk appetite across digital assets remains comparatively low. In the present market, traders are requiring more proof before attributing fundamental value to network activity spikes. Additionally, the chart displays XRP's recovery from recent lows in the $1.05-$1.10 range. 

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The asset has been pushed back above short-term support by buyers, and the RSI has recovered from oversold territory. However, XRP is currently approaching a significant technical obstacle near the $1.20 50-day EMA. As of right now, the surge in payment volume appears to have been more noise than signal. 

Although the metric attracted attention, it did not change the technical structure or market sentiment of XRP. Instead of viewing similar spikes as early indicators of a significant bullish reversal, traders are likely to treat them with increasing skepticism unless future increases in XRPL activity become sustained and coincide with rising transaction demand, liquidity, and price appreciation.

XRP posted a strong rally in recent days, in line with a broader recovery trend seen in cryptocurrency markets ahead of July 4. After hitting a low of $1.02 on July 1, the asset climbed for four consecutive days and was trading at $1.14 on July 4.

Buying interest surged near support levelsAccording to data from Santiment, several weeks of prevailing fear, ETF outflows, cautious institutional stances, and weak sentiment are gradually giving way to renewed buying interest in crypto markets. Buyers stepped in especially near critical support zones, lifting several major cryptocurrencies—including XRP—on the same trading day.

Santiment noted that short- and long-term average returns in XRP dropped to historic lows, indicating a climate of extreme fear that could pave the way for a relief rally.

After remaining stuck between $1.00 and $1.07 for several days, XRP broke out to the upside. The asset has gained more than 8% over the past week, as some investors interpreted deep losses as a potential contrarian signal.

Relief rally follows deep lossesOn-chain profitability indicators set the stage for this move. XRP’s 30-day MVRV (Market Value to Realized Value) ratio dropped to around minus 45%, while its 365-day MVRV fell to approximately minus 47%. This suggests that the average cost basis for both short- and long-term holders remains above the current price.

Mini glossary: MVRV is an on-chain metric that measures the ratio between market value and realized value. A negative MVRV indicates most investors are in a loss position and can sometimes mean selling pressure is easing.

Santiment highlighted that in more than 12 years of trading history, average returns over these time ranges have never dipped so low for XRP. This points to an unusual degree of fear in the market and casts the recent upturn as a relief bounce.

Technical outlook versus Bitcoin improvesXRP’s latest price action also shows technical strengthening against Bitcoin. On the two-hour XRP/BTC chart, the 50-period moving average has crossed above the 200-period moving average—a short-term “golden cross” signal.

Following its 19-month low of $1.01 on June 25, XRP managed to stay within the $1.00 range, as short-term technical indicators versus Bitcoin suggested a rebound was underway.

During mid-July trading, XRP’s strong gains compared to Bitcoin reversed a decline that had persisted since mid-June. Still, with the price remaining around the $1.00 mark, the move has yet to translate into a broad breakout.

Network growth accelerates despite weak priceDespite recent price disappointments, on-chain data reveals sustained interest in XRP. On the XRP Ledger, 4,941 new wallets were created in a single day—the largest jump in network growth in more than three months.

Even as price performance lags, the influx of new users highlights ongoing ecosystem adoption. The $1.00–$1.05 range is being watched as a potential pullback buying zone, while overall market sentiment reflects the highest level of fear of missing out in the past three months.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.