XRP Holds Near $1.13 as Swell 2026 RLUSD Focus Sparks Backlash and Fed Bets Fade

XRP News

XRP slipped alongside the broader market as traders dialed back expectations for additional Federal Reserve rate cuts this year. The token changed hands around $1.13, down roughly 1.5% over 24 hours, moving in lockstep with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana as risk appetite cooled. Notably, the decline carried no XRP-specific catalyst; instead, it reflected a macro-driven retreat from higher-risk assets after policy signals suggested fewer easing moves ahead. As an altcoin with rising correlation to equities, XRP increasingly tracks rate-sensitive flows rather than its own fundamentals, leaving short-term direction hostage to incoming US economic data and the Fed's next communication.

Attention also turned to Ripple's announcement of Swell 2026, the company's flagship annual event, scheduled for October 27-29 at The Shed in New York's Hudson Yards. For the first time, the conference will merge with the developer-focused XRPL Apex gathering, featuring more than 75 speakers and over 50 sessions across payments, tokenization, DeFi, artificial intelligence and interoperability. CEO Brad Garlinghouse framed the moment as a pivotal one for institutional adoption. Yet the agenda leaned heavily on RLUSD, Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin, positioning it as a core instrument for corporate treasury management and cross-border settlement on the blockchain.

The framing triggered a sharp response from XRP holders, who flooded Ripple's official channels with criticism within hours of the announcement. Long-term retail investors argued they had been systematically sidelined as the company prioritized RLUSD and institutional partnerships while XRP's price stagnated. Calls for a token burn to reduce circulating supply resurfaced, a measure Ripple has consistently rejected. Because XRP remains a retail-driven asset whose community sentiment directly shapes buy and sell flows, the backlash matters beyond optics. Unlike an algorithmic stablecoin, RLUSD carries no price upside for speculators, deepening fears that Ripple's commercial focus is drifting away from the token itself.

Beyond the event controversy, Ripple continued to widen its real-world payments footprint, this time across Africa through an investment in Flutterwave, one of the continent's largest payment processors. The move underscores Ripple's strategy of embedding its rails into high-growth remittance corridors where settlement friction and currency volatility remain acute. African markets, with large diaspora populations and fragmented banking infrastructure, represent a natural testing ground for low-cost cross-border transfers. The expansion aligns with a broader institutional push that has also seen tokenized real-world assets surpass $43 billion globally, a 37% rise over six months, even as spot crypto prices struggled through a difficult quarter.

Ripple also leaned on network throughput as evidence of momentum, noting the XRP Ledger has now processed more than 4 billion transactions since launch. The company continues to market the ledger's ISO 20022 compatibility and institutional-grade settlement capabilities as durable long-term advantages, arguing they position XRP infrastructure for regulated payment flows. Critics counter that raw transaction counts measure network usage, not investor returns, and no clear link was drawn between ledger activity and token value. The disconnect has become a recurring tension: robust technical adoption metrics on one side, persistent price underperformance on the other.

The price weakness is not new. XRP has shed roughly 17% over the past 30 days, around 21% over 60 days and close to 21% over 90 days, underscoring sustained medium-term downside pressure despite occasional intraday bounces. Trading volume fell about 27% day-over-day to near $1.36 billion, a sign that participants are shifting to the sidelines amid the prevailing bear market conditions. Market watchers flag the $1.10 to $1.15 band as the decisive short-term battleground; holding it would preserve the structure, while a clean break risks accelerating selling as macro uncertainty keeps speculative demand subdued.

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $1.1690 resistance at 76/100, driven by the confluence of the R2 pivot, Fibonacci 0.214, the previous day's high and the EMA 20, while the $1.1147 support scores 75/100 on the S1 pivot, Fibonacci 0.114 and a MACD cross. Derivatives positioning is stretched: the long/short account ratio sits at 3.05, with 75.3% of accounts long against open interest of $640 million, even as the perp funding rate prints slightly negative at -0.0025%. With the Fear and Greed Index at 14 (Extreme Fear) and RSI at 38.88, a reclaim of $1.1690 would favor bulls, whereas losing $1.1147 likely opens the path toward the $1.0509 support and invalidates the near-term recovery thesis.