Holding XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) has been a frustrating experience this year. Ripple has never been in a stronger position as a company, as adoption keeps building around both the XRP token and the RLUSD stablecoin, yet the XRP price has spent most of 2026 falling.
The stark difference between the network’s progress and the token’s price only has two explanations—either the price hasn’t caught up to the progress yet, or the progress was never going to reach the token in the first place.
The second half of 2026 will start answering that, with XRP trading around $1.08 and the Senate expected to vote on the bill that decides the token’s legal status before the year ends. So, is XRP worth holding through 2026? Let’s weigh it honestly.
Why the XRP Price Keeps Falling in a Year Full of Good News
XRP started the year near $1.84 and looked ready to run, jumping to $2.41 in the first week of January. However, the rally didn’t last, and by early February XRP’s price had crashed to $1.11.
The token then spent the whole spring trying to recover, with every bounce failing around the $1.45 level, before June’s market-wide selloff dragged it down to its lowest level in more than a year—$1.03. XRP now trades around $1.08, down more than 50% over the past year.
What’s striking is that the drop ran straight through a year of genuinely good news for the Ripple network. Over the past twelve months, the SEC lawsuit that haunted XRP for years ended for good, spot XRP ETFs launched in the U.S., Ripple won conditional approval for a federal bank charter, and RLUSD passed $1 billion in circulation.
But the issue is that the market had spent years trading that lawsuit before it ended. XRP rallied into the settlement and peaked in July 2025, which was weeks before the case officially closed in August. So by the time the ink dried, everyone who wanted in had already bought and many started taking profits afterwards.
Beyond that, XRP tends to fall steeper than Bitcoin when investors get nervous, and with the Fed pushing rate-cut hopes further out, investors have been nervous nearly all year. The question now is what could actually lift the XRP price.
The Case for Holding XRP Now Depends on the ETFs and the CLARITY Act
The demand that could move the XRP price this year comes from two places, and neither one is the Ripple news everyone talks about. The first is the spot XRP ETFs, which have to buy actual XRP with every dollar that comes in, so the inflows turn directly into demand for the token. The funds have pulled in $1.48 billion since launching last November.
The buying never stopped even as the price sank toward $1, which is not how these products usually behave when an asset keeps falling. That said, the buying pace has softened. The funds’ net assets slipped to around $944 million because the falling XRP price ate into their value even while deposits kept coming, and the quarter closed with a rare daily outflow on June 30.
The second factor is the CLARITY Act—the bill that would settle XRP’s status as a commodity under U.S. law once and for all, and remove the legal excuse many big institutions still lean on for staying out. The Senate returns on July 13 and plans to take up a defense bill first, which likely pushes the CLARITY vote to late July or August. However, the odds have been moving the wrong way, with Polymarket now pricing the chance of passage this year around 42%, down from the 70%-plus odds it carried after clearing the committee in May.
The Federal Reserve hangs over both catalysts, since delayed rate cuts are the main reason money has kept avoiding risky assets like crypto all year. That macro pressure is why Standard Chartered—long the most bullish major bank on XRP—cut its 2026 target for XRP from $8 to $2.80 in February.
The bank’s analysts say the lower target mostly needs macro conditions to improve, yet that slashed forecast still stands roughly 160% above where XRP trades today, which is a sign of how badly the token has underperformed even lowered expectations.
Ripple’s Bank Charter and Stablecoin Don’t Pay XRP Holders Yet
Ripple won conditional approval in December from the OCC—the federal regulator that supervises national banks—to operate a national trust bank, and it has applied for a Federal Reserve master account that would plug it directly into the central bank’s payment system. On top of that, it has spent over $2.4 billion buying a prime broker, a payments platform, and a treasury software firm.
However, almost none of it flows to the token. Ripple’s own application to the OCC spells out what the new bank is for—managing the reserves behind RLUSD, its dollar stablecoin, and providing custody for institutions. The Fed account would settle stablecoin flows, and the acquisitions build out the company’s brokerage and treasury businesses. What XRP gets out of all that is mostly the small network fees underneath.
The strongest pushback comes from Evernorth—the largest public XRP treasury company, and one backed by Ripple itself. On June 30, the firm published data showing that every RLUSD trade on the XRP Ledger settles as an XRP transaction, with more than $2.5 billion routed through RLUSD pairs since the stablecoin launched.
The activity is there, but it’s small money. Ledger fees cost fractions of a cent, total trading on the ledger actually declined over the same stretch, and none of it has changed the direction of the XRP price. So Ripple’s build-out makes the long-term case stronger, but it does almost nothing for anyone deciding what to do with the token over the next six months.
What XRP Holders Risk if the Year’s Second Half Goes Wrong
There’s still a possibility that XRP drops below $1 and that deserves the same honest look. The $1 support level is what the entire market is watching as there’s little to catch the price until around $0.80.
Moreover, Ripple still holds tens of billions of XRP in escrow and releases up to 1 billion of it every month. The company usually relocks most of what it releases, but the schedule runs whether the market is ready or not.
The bigger risk now is if the CLARITY Act slips into 2027 rather than passing. Nothing dramatic would happen to XRP, but the price might spend another six months stuck near $1 while money rotates into whatever is moving. With sentiment already deep in extreme fear, that scenario is the one the market seems positioned for.
Should You Hold XRP Through 2026?
We think holding XRP through 2026 only makes sense as a position with conditions attached. The market has priced the token for more disappointment, yet institutions have kept buying it all the way down. And the one catalyst big enough to settle the argument is now only weeks away. That is the trade on the table, and it only holds together if you know exactly what would prove it wrong.
If the Senate votes the CLARITY Act down outright, the reason to hold this year is gone. If the fund inflows that held through the entire decline also turn into weeks of outflows, then the one thing that was actually working has stopped. And if XRP closes a week decisively below $1, that would mean the market gave up before the catalysts could arrive.
However, a simple delay wouldn’t break any of that—it would just mean another stretch of waiting near $1. As of today, none of those things has happened, so the case for holding is still standing, and at least you now know exactly what would change the answer.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks