Why Is XRP Down 60% Despite ETF Inflows and Ripple’s SEC Case Ending?

TL;DR

• XRP was down roughly 60% year over year as of July 13, 2026, trading near $1.07–$1.08 after reaching about $3.66 in July 2025.
• The end of Ripple’s SEC case and nearly $1.5 billion in spot XRP ETF inflows removed major barriers, but neither created enough buying pressure to offset the broader crypto selloff.
• Ripple’s involvement in Open USD is positive for the company, but the stablecoin is not issued by Ripple, and the XRP Ledger is not currently confirmed as a launch network.
• XRP tends to fall more sharply than Bitcoin during risk-off periods, helping explain why positive Ripple news failed to support the token’s price.
• The CLARITY Act remains an important regulatory catalyst, but delays in the Senate and uncertainty around its passage continue to weigh on market expectations.
• XRP’s decline shows why investors should distinguish between Ripple business developments and actual demand for the XRP token.

If you've been holding XRP over the past year, you've probably had one of the most confusing rides in crypto. The lawsuit got resolved. The ETF launched. Ripple even teamed up with Visa and Mastercard. Nearly every catalyst the community had waited years for finally showed up — and yet the price is down almost 60%. What's actually going on?

XRP Price Is Down Nearly 60% in One Year

Let's start with the facts. According to historical data from Investing.com, XRP was down roughly 60% over the previous 12 months as of July 13, 2026. TradingView's data shows a similar decline of about 60.61%, with the price currently sitting around $1.07-$1.08.

Zooming out makes the drop even clearer. According to analysis from Crypto.news, XRP hit a cycle high near $3.66 in July 2025, then slid through the back half of last year and the first half of this one, now sitting roughly a third below where it began 2026. A Yahoo Finance report adds an interesting detail: the decline didn't come from any bad news. June 2026 was actually a busy, mostly positive month for the Ripple network — the price still fell anyway, dragged down by a broader market selloff.

3 Major XRP Catalysts That Failed to Lift the Price

What makes this stretch so strange is that several of the biggest catalysts XRP holders had been waiting for have actually come through over the past year.

First, the SEC litigation formally ended in 2025. The court’s earlier ruling held that Ripple’s institutional XRP sales violated securities law, while certain programmatic sales through public exchanges did not constitute securities transactions. The conclusion of the appeals removed a major source of legal uncertainty, although it did not amount to a blanket ruling that every XRP transaction falls outside securities law, according to Crypto.news.

Second, spot ETFs launched. Spot XRP exchange-traded funds went live in November 2025 and have since pulled in roughly $1.48 billion in net inflows — a long-awaited institutional milestone for the token.

Third, Ripple joined a major stablecoin coalition. More recently, Ripple announced it's joining Open USD, a new dollar stablecoin backed by Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and more than 140 other companies. On the surface, this looked like exactly the kind of mainstream validation the community had been hoping for.

Why XRP Keeps Falling Despite Positive News

Taken individually, any one of these headlines might suggest XRP should have been one of the best-performing assets of the year. Instead, the opposite happened — and there are three main reasons why.

First, the Open USD "win" comes with a significant catch. Per Yahoo Finance's reporting, ripple is participating as an integration partner, but Open USD is not a Ripple-issued asset, and the XRP Ledger was not among the initially announced launch networks. Any future XRPL integration therefore remains prospective rather than confirmed.

Ripple joined to position its ledger as a settlement rail, not to issue or control the stablecoin itself. Even if transactions eventually route through the XRP Ledger, fees there cost only fractions of a cent, meaning the actual XRP consumed would be minimal. In short: good news for Ripple the company, but it doesn't create real demand for the XRP token itself.

Second, broad market weakness overwhelmed any individual good news. XRP slid from around $1.30 to about $1.04 in June 2026 alone — its weakest level since late 2024 — but Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and BNB all fell over the same period, suggesting this was a market-wide selloff rather than anything specific to XRP. Yahoo Finance's analysis also notes that XRP tends to fall more sharply than Bitcoin whenever sentiment turns, which helps explain why a rough month for the broader market hit it harder than most.

Third, the catalyst that could actually move the needle keeps getting delayed.

Could the CLARITY Act Help XRP Price Recover?

While the catalysts above have already played out with limited effect, one of the most closely watched remaining regulatory catalysts is the CLARITY Act, which would permanently classify XRP as a commodity under law rather than leaving its status to regulatory discretion.

The market’s remaining regulatory focus is the CLARITY Act, which would establish a statutory framework for determining when digital assets fall under CFTC commodity oversight rather than SEC securities jurisdiction. For XRP, passage could reinforce and codify the regulatory treatment that has emerged from the Ripple litigation and subsequent agency guidance, making it less vulnerable to changes in future administrations.

According to Yahoo Finance, the White House had originally targeted signing the bill by July 4 — a deadline that's now off the table. The Senate recessed on June 29 and didn't return until July 13, and with leadership prioritizing a defense bill in its first week back, the CLARITY Act's Senate floor vote has been pushed to late July or early August at the earliest. Passing the bill isn't straightforward either — it needs 60 votes, meaning roughly seven Democratic senators would need to cross the aisle, and talks reportedly broke down last week over an ethics provision targeting President Trump's own crypto holdings.

For XRP, the stakes cut both ways: passage would be the most substantial regulatory catalyst since the SEC case concluded, but every delay extends the uncertainty weighing on the token. That's part of why Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick recently cut his year-end XRP price target from $8 to $2.80.

What XRP’s 60% Decline Means for Investors

XRP's rough year offers a useful case study on three fronts:

First, good news being confirmed doesn't guarantee a price rally. When the market has already priced in an expectation, even a catalyst landing exactly as hoped can produce a "sell the news" effect — especially during a period of broader risk-off sentiment.

Second, distinguish between "company news" and "token news." Partnerships like Open USD are genuinely positive for Ripple's business, but that doesn't automatically translate into buying pressure on the XRP token — a distinction that gets blurred across a lot of crypto projects when ecosystem growth is conflated with token value.

Third, single-asset volatility is itself a risk factor worth managing. An asset whose fundamentals keep improving while its price still swings heavily with overall market mood is a reminder of why portfolio diversification matters — and it's part of why some investors are looking beyond crypto entirely, toward traditional assets like gold, oil, or stock indices, as a hedge.

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FAQ

Is XRP really down 60% over the past year?

Yes. Multiple independent data sources confirm a 59-61% decline over the trailing 12 months, with the price now just above $1, down sharply from its July 2025 cycle high near $3.66.

Will XRP rally once the CLARITY Act passes?

The bill addresses XRP's regulatory classification. If passed, it would theoretically remove a source of uncertainty, but price direction ultimately still depends on broader market sentiment and liquidity conditions — passage alone doesn't guarantee a rally.

Is now a good time to buy the dip on XRP?

That depends on individual risk tolerance and views on the CLARITY Act's progress. This article isn't investment advice — before deciding, it's worth tracking the specific timing of the Senate vote and overall market liquidity conditions.

Disclamier：This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and derivatives trading carries significant risk of loss. Always read the full terms of any promotion before participating.

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