XRP jumps 6.6% to $1.07 after bear trap at dollar support

XRP rose 6.62% to $1.06738 on Aug. 19, reversing from a $0.99524 low after US Treasury bond buybacks pushed yields lower.

"Negative commentary on XRP has climbed to a three-month extreme," Santiment said in a market note, citing social volume across X, Reddit and Telegram. The reading marks the highest bearish extreme since mid-May.

The breakdown below $1.00 lasted hours. Price snapped back above the dollar and ran to an intraday high of $1.07400, a 7.91% reversal from low to high in a single session. XRP's daily RSI sits at 56.24 against a moving average of 38.03, compared with Bitcoin at 71.98 and Ethereum at 75.73.

The failed breakdown strengthens the $1.00 support level, but XRP still faces resistance at $1.09-$1.10, the band that has capped every rally attempt since June. The CLARITY Act Senate vote on Sept. 15 remains the only scheduled event that could break the range.

The bear trap, step by step

XRP had been bleeding lower since late July, grinding from $1.15 toward the dollar in a steady sequence of lower highs. By mid-August it was pinned directly on $1.00, the most watched round number on the chart. When price finally gave way and traded to $0.99524, short sellers saw their signal — and long holders' stop-loss orders sat directly beneath.

The trap snapped shut within hours. Price reclaimed the dollar and never looked back, closing comfortably back inside the range it had supposedly just left. A support level that breaks and immediately reclaims does not weaken; it strengthens, because the market has now demonstrated there were buyers waiting under it.

XRP has been the worst performer among the majors this year, down more than 43 percent year to date. It has spent months making lower highs while Bitcoin and Ethereum at least held ranges. A failed breakdown at a major round number, on a day the whole market caught a macro bid, is the mechanism by which downtrends usually stop: the last flush fails to find sellers.

On-chain signals and ETF flows tell a mixed story

Santiment paired XRP's negative sentiment with rising participation on the ledger. On Aug. 14, the XRP Ledger recorded 49,929 active addresses in a single 24-hour span, its highest count in more than two months. But the activity spike does not mean what the count suggests. The ledger processed 1.39 million transactions on Aug. 11, and 928,521 of those were offers — orders placed on the ledger's built-in exchange — against just 301,226 payments. Two-thirds of that day's traffic was market-making bots posting orders on both sides of the book, not investors sending XRP.

ETF flows tell a similar story of weak conviction. XRP ETFs recorded $3.27 million through the first ten trading days of August, against $27.29 million across July — 96 percent below the $666.61 million they gathered in their first trading month back in November 2025. Total inflows since launch stand at $1.51 billion, with funds holding $933 million today.

On the upside, XRP needs to clear $1.09-$1.10, the resistance band that has rejected every rally attempt since June. A daily close above $1.10 would open the path toward $1.15, the late-July breakdown level. On the downside, $1.00 remains the key support — now reinforced by the failed breakdown — with $0.90 as the next structural level if it gives way.

The CLARITY Act, which would classify XRP as a commodity under federal law, faces a Senate cloture vote on Sept. 15. That procedural step ends debate and forces the bill onto the floor, and it remains the only meaningful scheduled event for XRP before year-end.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.