XRP Slips to $1.30 as Garlinghouse Defends Legal Clarity After Nasdaq Bell

Update 19:45 UTC: Garlinghouse has given his fullest public account of why Ripple supplied XRP to Evernorth, naming ecosystem investment and his trust in the treasury company's leadership as the deciding factors.

Garlinghouse at the Nasdaq Bell

XRP has steadied near $1.34 on Friday, holding inside the $1.28 to $1.37 band it was pushed out of on Wednesday; the XRP price is up about 2.6% over 24 hours and marginally higher since the morning, yet the wider frame, a market still trending down beneath its moving averages, is the state that everything else sits inside. What changed was the message from Ripple's leadership. Chief executive Brad Garlinghouse, appearing at the Nasdaq closing bell alongside Evernorth, a ceremony staged to mark a milestone for Evernorth's XRP digital asset treasury, the corporate vehicle that accumulates XRP on its balance sheet, said XRP already has legal clarity. He acknowledged disappointment that the CLARITY Act, the bill written to settle the token's regulatory classification, has failed to advance; his argument was that the market should not treat the stalled bill as the measure of the asset's standing, because the clarity he describes already exists in practice. The distinction matters for positioning: a bill that stalls is a legislative timing problem, while a claim of settled clarity, if markets accept it, removes the overhang that has weighed on the token through the quarter. The token, which has supplied much of this week's XRP news across treasury and payments threads, answered the appearance only mildly; the past day's gain is relief inside a range, not a breakout, and the commentary landed while the tape was already recovering from Wednesday's low near $1.28. For Evernorth, the milestone is the point; a treasury built to hold XRP on the balance sheet received a public showcase at the Nasdaq in the same week the legislative route stalled, and the pairing of company and treasury is itself the milestone the ceremony marked.

Garlinghouse has given his fullest public account of why Ripple supplied XRP to Evernorth, naming ecosystem investment and his trust in the treasury company's leadership as the deciding factors. In an interview on Evernorth's listing day, he pointed to CEO Ashish Virala, a former Ripple colleague who later sat on its board, as the central figure behind the decision, crediting him with proven ability in hiring and strategy. He argued the Nasdaq listing brings three gains to the XRP ecosystem: higher liquidity and credibility, a fresh investment route for investors who cannot reach digital assets directly, and a shift beyond passive holding toward on-chain and off-chain yield strategies and institutional products. He added that Ripple's early focus on banks and traditional finance drew criticism at the time, and while US institutions now participate in the market more actively than ever, he said it is too early to declare the difficult period over.

Everyday Payments and the $1.37 Hurdle

Ripple's chief technology officer, David Schwartz, has framed the same moment differently, putting everyday payments and accessible investment routes ahead of price targets as the adoption drivers that matter; the two executives' positions are contrasts of emphasis, not conflict. A concrete integration went largely unrewarded by the market: Cross River has connected RLUSD, the dollar stablecoin Ripple issues for payment flows, to its core banking infrastructure, the kind of plumbing that payment-led adoption runs on, yet XRP did not rally on the news. That silence points to what is setting the near-term trade: broader risk appetite and technical positioning, not payments headlines. The chart still obeys a familiar support and resistance map. After dipping toward $1.28, close to the 200-day moving average near that mark, XRP rebounded and now sits above the $1.28–$1.32 support zone; the first hurdle above is $1.37, and a reclaim would put $1.41–$1.43 in view, while a sustained break below $1.28 would leave $1.25 as the next downside reference, a layout consistent with the XRP technical analysis tracked through the week. The rebound extends a session that opened with a 2.8% climb to $1.33 after a 14.5% weekly slide tested the $1.30 area, and it follows a stretch in which the coin gave up the summer range it had held for months. Dom Kwok's $1,000 forecast, the most extravagant long-range call still attached to the token, survives mainly as commentary in this environment; a move of that size would require a full bull market and a structure the chart has not built, and even far smaller targets, such as $5, are framed well beyond the near term. Longer-horizon sentiment is not uniformly cautious: earlier coverage that cited a $1.6 billion US fund base picked XRP as the best 12-month bet among large caps.

Our own composite scoring puts the ceiling this tape must clear at $1.4169, a resistance level scored 96 out of 100, with $1.3505 close behind at 93; the nearest support of note is $1.2936, scored 50, sitting almost at the current price of $1.2962. The heavier floor lies below, at $1.2456, where the reading reaches 87. Positioning in the contract trading market has flipped mildly negative: perpetual funding now runs at -0.0010%, while long accounts still outnumber shorts 3.72 to 1, 78.8% against 21.2%. The classification itself has not changed: the trend is still read as a downtrend, the MACD signal remains bearish, and RSI at 35.03 keeps momentum on the defensive until $1.3505, and then $1.4169, gives way (as of 19:45 UTC).