NEW YORK, March 12, 2026, 13:57 EDT
XRP hovered close to $1.38 on Thursday, slipping around 1.4%. Bloomberg flagged Ripple’s new share buyback, pegging the company’s value at $50 billion, and Ripple announced plans for an Australian financial services license. The token barely budged—fresh headlines, but no spark for XRP’s sideways drift.
Crypto barely budged, with macro forces back in the driver’s seat. Oil lingered close to $100, the dollar held steady, and digital asset traders looked past Ripple’s expansion, focusing instead on the odds of U.S. rate cuts.
Bigger tokens echoed the trend. Bitcoin dipped 0.7% to $70,331. Ether barely moved, holding at $2,065. XRP tracked alongside the group, not reacting to any specific company news.
The U.S. consumer price index landed at 0.3% higher for February, up 2.4% year over year—figures that gave investors a brief breather on Wednesday. But attention snapped back to concerns over inflation, this time stoked by the Middle East oil shock.
Monica Guerra at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management said stubbornly high oil prices could “complicate” the Fed’s next steps. Goldman Sachs just shifted its rate-cut forecast to September, scrapping its earlier June prediction. Still, a Reuters poll showed most economists are holding onto bets for a June cut. Reuters
On March 11, Ripple announced plans to obtain an Australian Financial Services License by acquiring BC Payments Australia, opening the door for the company to manage settlement, compliance, currency conversion, and payouts itself. “Licensing is fundamental to Ripple’s strategy,” said Fiona Murray, Ripple’s Asia-Pacific managing director. The company highlighted APAC payments volume that nearly doubled in 2025. Ripple
Ripple is looking to repurchase as much as $750 million in shares from employees and investors, Bloomberg said, with the buyback running through April. That move would peg Ripple’s valuation at $50 billion—higher than the $40 billion figure it revealed after pulling in $500 million last November.
XRP hasn’t completely shaken off the fallout from the SEC lawsuit that kicked off in 2020. A federal judge in New York determined in 2023 that XRP sales through public exchanges didn’t qualify as securities. Still, it wasn’t until August 2025 that the saga wrapped for good, with both Ripple and the regulator abandoning their appeals. Ripple was left with a $125 million penalty and an injunction.
Right now, XRP is trading more in line with the big-name crypto tokens than reflecting Ripple’s private market value. On Thursday, the token moved between $1.37 and $1.41—nowhere close to its 52-week high of almost $3.66. The core risk is clear: if oil prices remain elevated and rate cuts get pushed even further out, XRP might just hover here or even slide lower with the rest of crypto.
