If you held XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) through the 2022 bear market, you probably know what losing the 200-week EMA looks like. In May 2022, the XRP price was at $0.57 when it closed below the 200-week EMA, and over the following two months it crashed another 50% to $0.28—the absolute bottom of the cycle. It took until November 2024 for XRP to reclaim the 200-week EMA, and from there it rallied to $3.65 by mid-July 2025.
XRP’s 200-week EMA sits at $1.40 right now, and the XRP price dropped below it at the end of March. With XRP hovering around $1.30-$1.33, the 200-week EMA has now flipped into a resistance at $1.40. One analyst who’s been tracking this pattern thinks the same crash from 2022 is setting up again, and says XRP could drop to as low as $0.80.
What Happened the Last Time XRP Lost the 200-Week EMA?
XRP has had three major peaks—$3.84 in 2018, $1.96 in 2021, and $3.65 in July 2025—and each time the selloff that followed eventually brought the price back down to the 200-week EMA. After the 2018 high, XRP lost the 200-week EMA and kept falling for nearly two years until it bottomed at $0.11 in March 2020. It happened again in May 2022 when XRP lost the 200-week EMA at $0.57 and crashed another 50% to $0.28, which ended up being the absolute bottom of that bear market.
What made that 2022 drop tricky is that the XRP price bounced 195% from $0.28 to $0.80 along the way, and most people assumed the worst was over. But the price was still below the 200-week EMA during that entire rally, and it eventually rolled over again. Analyst ChartNerd has been pointing this out that these bounces look like recoveries, but until the price gets back above the 200-week EMA and holds it, they tend to be traps.
At $1.30, XRP is back below the 200-week EMA for the first time since the November 2024 breakout that launched the run to $3.65. If previous cycles are any guide, the drop from here could have a lot further to go before it finds real support.
Why ChartNerd Is Targeting $0.80 for XRP
ChartNerd’s $0.80 target comes from the 2-week Gaussian Channel, a long-term volatility indicator that has caught every XRP bear market bottom going back nearly a decade. In March 2017, XRP bottomed at $0.0048, right at the lower Gaussian band. In March 2020, it bottomed at $0.1049, again at the lower band, and in June 2022, it was $0.2875. Each time, the XRP price fell until it tagged that lower channel and then reversed.
The upper band of the Gaussian Channel currently sits around $0.80 to $0.90, and that’s where ChartNerd expects this cycle’s bottom to form—and he’s not the only one watching that zone. Analyst EGRAG Crypto flagged a separate bearish signal—the 21-week EMA crossing below the 50-week EMA. That was the same cross that appeared in March 2022 when XRP was at $0.93 before crashing 69% to $0.28. EGRAG’s target range of $0.85 to $0.91 falls in almost the same area as ChartNerd’s, and it comes from a completely different indicator.
ChartNerd sees two ways XRP could drop to $0.80 from $1.30. The first is a relief rally toward $1.80 to $2.00 that fools traders into thinking the bottom is in before rolling over. This would be similar to the misleading bounce that happened in 2022. The second is a faster drop where the XRP price heads straight for the $0.80 to $0.90 zone without the fake rally in between. Either way, he’s watching that range as the area where XRP finally finds a floor.
Why XRP in 2026 Is Not the Same as 2022
XRP’s chart pattern looks almost identical, but everything around it has changed. In May 2022, XRP was fighting an active SEC lawsuit that had been dragging on since December 2020. There were no ETFs or institutional partners using XRP for actual payments. The broader market was dealing with the Terra/LUNA collapse, the Fed was aggressively hiking rates, and there was nothing that could have stopped the selloff.
In 2026, the SEC and CFTC have classified XRP as a commodity and XRP ETFs have pulled in over $1 billion in cumulative inflows. Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, and Deutsche Bank have all entered the XRP ecosystem, and Ripple’s cross-border payment network has expanded beyond what anyone expected during the 2022 bear market. None of that existed four years ago, and it gives the XRP price a fundamentally different kind of support than it had when the same technical pattern played out.
The CLARITY Act is one key catalyst that could break the pattern entirely. The Senate Banking Committee is targeting a late April markup, and if it passes, XRP gets permanent federal commodity status. That would open the door for pension funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth allocations to adopt XRP.
What to Watch If You Hold XRP Right Now
If XRP rallies back toward $1.80 to $2.00 over the next few weeks, pay close attention to how it behaves there. ChartNerd’s own analysis warns that a bounce into that range could be the same kind of trap that played out in 2022—a rally that looks like recovery but ends up rolling over into the real decline. A weekly close above $2.00 would be the clearest sign that the 2022 pattern has broken and the bottom is already in. Anything short of that keeps the $0.80 to $0.90 target on the table.
On the downside, the $1.28 support has held every dip in 2026 so far. If that level breaks, the next support sits around $1.00 to $1.10, and below that there’s not much till Chart Nerd’s $0.80 target. The CLARITY Act markup in late April is probably the single biggest catalyst for XRP, and if it passes, the technical pattern may not matter at all.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks