XRP declined sharply this week, falling below $1.40 despite significant partnership announcements from Ripple. The asset dropped over 6% weekly and saw its market cap fall below $90 billion, disappointing analysts who had predicted a breakout above the $1.51–$1.53 resistance level.
Ripple announced two major business developments this week. The company enhanced its partnership with Brevan Howard, a major Wall Street entity, to expand access to multi-asset prime brokerage services. Ripple Prime will streamline operations across traditional and crypto asset classes to improve capital efficiency. The collaboration follows Ripple's $500 million investment round in 2025, in which Brevan Howard participated.
In South Korea, Ripple partnered with Meritz Securities to improve digital asset infrastructure in the country, focusing on custody and tokenization services. The agreement aligns with Ripple's broader expansion in Korea, including existing partnerships with K Bank and Kyobo Life Insurance.
Stablecoin Growth
Ripple's native stablecoin RLUSD, launched in December 2024, reached a market cap exceeding $2.5 billion, making it the 40th-largest cryptocurrency and the eighth-largest stablecoin. The growth followed the launch of Ripple Mint, a platform enabling institutional customers to access, mint, redeem, and manage the stablecoin. RLUSD is now closing the gap to PayPal USD, which has a market cap of $2.88 billion.
Price Decline Factors
Despite business progress, XRP faced multiple headwinds. Exchange-traded fund inflows tracking XRP dropped 94% week over week, falling from over $75.5 million to under $4.75 million. On-chain data showed approximately 1.6 billion XRP tokens transferred to Binance over the past 30 days, increasing immediate selling pressure.
Broader market weakness also contributed to XRP's decline, with Bitcoin falling to $82,200 for the first time in over two weeks and Ethereum down nearly 6% for the week.
