NEW YORK, Jan 2, 2026, 12:20 ET
- XRP traded near $2 as a bullish $8 end-2026 forecast circulated again and traders watched key support around $1.85.
- U.S.-listed spot XRP ETFs have been cited as drawing more than $1 billion in assets since launching in November, even as price stays well below mid-2025 highs.
- Recent analysis pointed to sharply lower XRP Ledger activity, raising doubts that ETF inflows alone can push XRP back toward $5.
XRP steadied near $2 on Friday as a bullish Wall Street forecast for the token’s 2026 price returned to trader chatter, even as the market focused on a fresh month of token supply entering circulation.
The renewed debate matters now because XRP is starting 2026 with a mix of institutional adoption headlines and weak price momentum. After regulatory progress and new exchange-traded funds, the token is still far below its mid-year highs.
Traders are also watching how much real demand sits behind the story. Recent reports pointed to falling activity on the XRP Ledger — the blockchain network that processes XRP transactions — at the same time leverage is building in derivatives markets.
XRP was last at about $1.99. Bitcoin traded around $90,780 and ether around $3,140.
Standard Chartered has reiterated a forecast that XRP could climb to $8 by the end of 2026, implying more than 300% upside from late-December levels, a CoinDesk report said. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, pointed to improving U.S. regulatory clarity as a key tailwind for institutional demand.
The same report said U.S.-listed spot XRP ETFs have pulled in roughly $1.25 billion in net inflows since their November launch, with flows steadier than the stop-start patterns seen in bitcoin and ether ETFs. A spot ETF is a fund that holds the underlying asset rather than tracking it through futures contracts.
CoinDesk said XRP’s price held near the $1.85 area even as volume ran about 20.8% above weekly norms, a sign of heavy positioning. Open interest — the value of outstanding derivatives bets — climbed to about $3.43 billion, the report said, ahead of January’s scheduled unlock of 1 billion XRP from escrow, a pre-set release of tokens that can affect liquid supply. 1
The focus on support levels comes after a steep pullback from last year’s highs. A year-end report carried by Yahoo Finance said XRP had slid about 48% from a July peak near $3.65 despite legal progress and new ETF inflows, even as Ripple spent about $2.7 billion on acquisitions in 2025. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the SEC case a “war of legal terror,” the report said. 2
TipRanks, in a separate year-end analysis, said the ETF “flow” story has not yet translated into stronger network usage. It cited a 94% drop in daily active users on the XRP Ledger to about 38,500 by end-December from a March 2025 peak of more than 600,000, even as it said spot XRP ETFs amassed over $1.1 billion in net assets; the report also flagged warnings from technical analyst Peter Brandt that weak demand could weigh on price. 3
