XRP (XRP) Outpaces Bitcoin on Upbit With 273% Volume Surge

Upbit Volume Outruns Bitcoin

XRP (XRP) briefly outtraded Bitcoin on South Korea's largest crypto exchanges this week, as one of the world's most rotation-prone retail markets drove a sharp regional volume spike. Daily XRP turnover on Upbit, the country's dominant venue, jumped 273% in a single day to roughly $1.84 billion, and one dataset put XRP volume near $418.9 million as the price climbed 25.2% to around $1.37. Over the same stretch, Bitcoin changed hands near $77,700 — meaning that for a stretch of hours, Ripple's cross-border settlement asset was the busier ticket in Seoul.

The origin of the flow remains unconfirmed. Dr. Kamilah Stevenson, a wealth-focused YouTube host, suggested part of the buying power rotated out of Korean semiconductor stocks into XRP, though she stopped short of verifying that path directly. Korean retail is famous for fast rotation between high-momentum altcoin plays, so the surge could be pure momentum trading rather than conviction accumulation — a familiar pattern in the long-running kimchi premium story, where local demand periodically detaches Korean prices from the global tape.

The spike has since cooled. The weekly trend remains negative after the Korea-fueled pop, though turnover stays elevated in the $1.8–2.5 billion range, keeping the latest XRP price action in the top tier of tracked assets by volume. Near-term structure is tight: support has formed around $1.32–1.34, close to where price was sitting at the time of writing, while resistance clusters at $1.37–1.40, a ceiling the token has failed to clear decisively in recent sessions. A reclaim of $1.37 would open a retest of the $1.44 Korea-spike high with continued Asian retail flow as the catalyst, while a daily break below $1.32 would invalidate the near-term setup and open room toward the low $1.20s. For readers weighing an entry, our guide to buying XRP covers venue selection and custody basics.

Ledger Liquidity Concentrates

While Korea supplied the noise, the XRP Ledger's own liquidity picture shifted more quietly. Evernorth — the Ripple-backed firm seeking to become a publicly traded XRP treasury through a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II — released its Q2 2026 XRP Liquidity Report on Tuesday, and the figures we are reviewing show a market growing heavier per participant even as headcount shrinks. Order-book volume averaged 3.57 million XRP per day, up 79% from roughly 1.99 million a year earlier, while daily order-book traders fell 40%, from 1,864 to 1,111. Average volume per account nearly tripled, from 1,072 to 3,217 XRP per day, meaning larger orders fully absorbed the drop in active participants.

Concentration extended across the ledger's decentralized exchange, where total volume averaged 4.42 million XRP per day, about 20% above Q2 2025, with order books taking 81% of that activity versus 54% a year earlier. Quarter over quarter, volume fell 16% off an unusually active first quarter. Evernorth links some of the concentration to permissioned domains and permissioned trading features that went live in February, though it could not assign a specific share of volume to those venues. The thinner participation also mirrors a marketwide contraction: on-chain exchange volume across seven major programmable networks dropped 46% year over year, and transaction fees on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism and Avalanche collectively fell 38%.

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin produced the quarter's standout growth. Average balances on the ledger reached $539 million, up 642% from $73 million, and supply on XRPL hit roughly $676.9 million by the end of June before crossing $1 billion on Aug. 28 — about 82% of the ledger's stablecoin market. Average value held on XRPL set a quarterly record of $4.26 billion, against just $99 million six quarters earlier. The price backdrop helps explain it: XRP gained roughly 37% in August, from a $0.9874 low on Aug. 15 to a six-month high of $1.6963 on Aug. 22. US spot XRP exchange-traded funds also took in $110.49 million for the week ending Aug. 28, their best weekly total of 2026, lifting cumulative net inflows across seven funds above $1.66 billion, as detailed in our earlier spot XRP ETF inflows coverage. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

$1.43 Resistance in Focus

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $1.4272 resistance at 79/100, driven by the confluence of the high-volume node, the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement and the ATR upper band, while the $1.2910 support scores 96/100 on the back of a flip of prior resistance into support, the 0.618 Fibonacci and the 20-day EMA. Spot price sits at $1.3482, with RSI at 58.41, a bearish MACD signal and a sideways trend. Positioning is crowded: perpetual futures funding runs at 0.0068%, open interest stands near $900 million and the long/short account ratio reads 2.81 — 73.8% long — against a Fear & Greed Index of 63, in Greed territory. The bullish case needs a daily candlestick close above $1.4272 to target $1.5139; losing $1.2910 invalidates the range thesis and exposes $1.1600, which our engine scores at 75/100.