NEW YORK, March 20, 2026, 15:56 EDT
As of 11:48 a.m. EDT on Friday, XRP was trading at $1.44 according to CoinDesk. Over on CoinGecko, the token hovered around $1.43, off roughly 1.3% over the last 24 hours, with a market cap of about $87.5 billion. Ripple’s token remained below the $1.52 mark from March 17, though it was still showing a 2.4% gain over the week.
This matters right now: U.S. regulators just put XRP squarely in the “digital commodity” camp this week—a designation the SEC reserves for tokens whose price stems from active crypto networks and basic supply-demand, not business rights. For XRP and Ripple, after years tangled in legal battles, that’s about as clear a signal as U.S. regulators have sent so far.
The SEC put XRP in the same digital commodity bucket as bitcoin, ether, and solana. “The wait is over,” CFTC Chair Michael S. Selig said. SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins took a similar line, noting that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”
Traders stayed on the sidelines. Barron’s put bitcoin at about $70,305 early Friday; ether slipped 1.6%, XRP dropped 1%. Over at Reuters, stocks were sliding and bond yields spiking, inflation worries from the war shaking up expectations for central banks.
Things have soured quickly. Brent crude was quoted at $112.27 by Reuters, with U.S. stocks facing what looks like a fourth consecutive week of losses. The Iran war, rising energy prices—markets are now factoring in not just slower rate cuts, but in some pockets, even talk of possible hikes.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen pointed to “tightening liquidity and geopolitical uncertainty” as reasons why institutional flows remain hesitant. In comments quoted Thursday by Investor’s Business Daily, Chen added that a turn in macro data or a drop in energy prices might lure investment back to digital assets. Investors
This week, another nod to crypto: the SEC gave Nasdaq the green light to allow some stocks and ETFs to trade and settle as tokenized securities—a move that edges traditional market infrastructure closer to the blockchain. Still, the news did little to brighten sentiment in crypto circles on Friday.
XRP comes with heavier baggage than many other major tokens. Last year, Reuters noted that the SEC dropped its appeal of Judge Analisa Torres’s 2023 decision, which found that XRP sales on public exchanges don’t qualify as securities; Ripple, however, still faced penalties for institutional sales.
For buyers, the risk boils down to this: interpretation isn’t the same as law. The CFTC described this week’s action as a complement to Congress’s push for market-structure rules, but Citi strategist Alex Saunders flagged on Monday that the “window of opportunity” for U.S. legislation this year is getting smaller. CFTC
XRP, caught between hopes for improved regulation and a tougher macro backdrop, looks set to track bitcoin and ether unless something shifts—whether that’s a drop in oil, easing rate jitters, or Congress putting guidance into statute. Its legal narrative alone isn’t moving the needle for now.
