NEW YORK, December 31, 2025, 17:32 ET — After-hours
- XRP fell about 1.6% to around $1.84 in late U.S. trading.
- Bitcoin was on track for its first annual drop since 2022, weighing on altcoins.
- Traders are watching early-January macro data and XRP supply signals.
XRP fell about 1.6% to $1.84 on Wednesday, extending a late-year drift as traders closed out positions ahead of the New Year holiday. Investing.com data showed XRP last at $1.841, after a previous close of $1.871, with the token ranging between $1.8117 and $1.8830 on the day. 1
The move matters because crypto has traded like a macro-sensitive risk asset into year-end, with investors reacting to the same growth, rates and policy headlines that drive equities. That has left fewer token-specific catalysts able to overpower the broader tape.
Bitcoin was down about 1% at around $87,500 and on track for its first annual loss since 2022, down 6.2% in 2025 after touching a record above $126,000 in October, a Reuters tally showed. “Bitcoin increasingly exhibits the characteristics of a risk asset within the global financial system,” Linh Tran, senior market analyst at XS.com, said. Investors are also watching Washington in 2026, including proposed market-structure legislation for digital assets, after sharp swings this year tied to trade and rate expectations. 2
XRP, the token used on the XRP Ledger payments network, often mirrors bitcoin’s direction when macro flows dominate. That dynamic has been more pronounced in thin, holiday-affected trading, where risk moves can spill quickly into smaller tokens.
Institutional wrappers have added another channel for those flows. Grayscale’s XRP Trust ETF, which trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker GXRP, reported about $228 million in assets under management as of Dec. 30, according to its website. 3
Assets under management — the cash invested in a fund — can swing around quarter- and year-end as money managers rebalance. Shifts into or out of XRP-linked products can also ripple into the spot market as dealers adjust hedges.
Traders are also looking at the supply pipeline. Ripple locked 55 billion XRP into on-ledger escrow in 2017 and set the escrows to release a total of 1 billion XRP per month, with unused amounts put back into new escrows for later release, the XRP Ledger’s developer site said. 4
On the chart, XRP has chopped around the mid-$1.80s, with sellers showing up ahead of $1.90 and buyers defending the $1.80 area. A push back above $2 would be watched as a sentiment test after the year’s volatility.
Liquidity could stay patchy into the first trading days of 2026. U.S. equity markets are closed for New Year’s Day on Thursday, according to the New York Stock Exchange holiday calendar, even though crypto trades around the clock. 5
In the U.S., the next test for risk appetite comes quickly: initial jobless claims are scheduled for Friday, followed by the ISM manufacturing survey on Monday and the monthly employment report on Jan. 9, the New York Fed’s calendar shows. Big rate-sensitive markets have driven crypto this year, so stronger-than-expected data could revive debate over how long the Federal Reserve keeps policy tight. 6
For XRP specifically, traders will track whether flows into listed products such as GXRP hold up and whether early-month escrow activity translates into net supply moving onto exchanges. Policy headlines around payments, stablecoins and market structure remain another key swing factor.
XRP ends 2025 with little margin for error after a month of whipsaws. The next few sessions will test whether the token can stabilize above the mid-$1.80s as macro headlines return after the holiday lull.
