Sellers Send Ripple XRP Below $100Bn Marketcap After Brief Milestone
XRP Ripple briefly pushed its market capitalization back above $100Bn on Tuesday, September 22, before profit-taking dragged the token below that threshold later in the session.
The milestone mattered because it landed alongside a reported wave of ETF buying and a sharp rebound from a slide toward $1.29 just a week earlier. Here is the tension worth unpacking: strong institutional demand met a market that still wasn’t ready to hold new highs.
XRP traded between $1.54 and roughly $1.66 during the session. At the time of writing, the token sits at $1.49, down a sizeable -7.8% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. Its market capitalization had settled back to about $92Bn, keeping it the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by that measure.
For readers newer to the space, XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger, a blockchain network associated with Ripple, the company best known for building cross-border payment infrastructure used by banks and remittance providers.
On the other hand, a sell wall exists at $1.55. If it break through this, there are another sell walls exist at $1.68–$1.70 range. pic.twitter.com/AGJFyjt6mZ
The rebound follows a rough stretch. XRP slid to around $1.29 a week earlier after the US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, a crypto market-structure bill whose defeat rattled sentiment across the sector.
From that low, the token has now gained nearly +14% over seven days, slightly outpacing the broader crypto market’s roughly +13% weekly rise, according to figures reported by TheStreet.
That outperformance is notable given how far XRP still has to travel. Even with the rally, the token remains about 57% below its all-time high of $3.65, a reminder that a brief run past $100Bn in market cap is a milestone, not a reclamation of prior glory.
Recent institutional ETF activity has drawn attention, and coverage of XRP ETF inflows holding up during price weakness suggests interest has been building for weeks, not days.
A $100Bn market cap, even briefly, was a notable milestone for XRP. That is part of why the milestone drew attention even though it didn’t stick.
Institutional flows appeared to influence Tuesday’s XRP price spike, although they weren’t the sole cause. US spot XRP ETFs attracted over $20M, driven mainly by Bitwise, which added $19.17M in a single day, bringing its fund to around $615M in net assets and making it the largest XRP ETF.
Over the past week, spot XRP ETFs recorded about $9.56M in net inflows, continuing a streak of 10 weeks of positive flows, totaling between $1.71Bn and $1.72Bn.
On-chain activity reflected this price movement, with 1,917 XRP transactions over $100,000 on Tuesday, the highest in a month, and 3,647 new wallets created.
This surge signals more large-value transactions, though it doesn’t confirm that large holders were accumulating rather than moving assets.
With the $100Bn market-cap milestone now in the rearview mirror, attention shifts to two specific price levels. With XRP now trading around $1.47, traders are watching whether it can quickly reclaim $1.50 and hold it before moving back toward $1.60.
If $1.60 is reclaimed and held, this could build momentum toward the psychologically significant $2 level. Neither level is a guarantee, and both should be read as watchpoints rather than forecasts. The path there likely depends on whether the reported ETF demand from firms like Bitwise persists beyond a single strong session.
It also depends on whether Santiment’s large-transaction and new-wallet counts stay elevated, and whether XRP can avoid another sharp pullback like the one that followed the CLARITY Act vote last week.
For now, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has proven it can touch $100Bn again. Whether it can stay there is a different question entirely, and one that this week’s profit-taking already answered in the near term.
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Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
XRP's dip below $100B market cap after briefly reclaiming it signals profit-taking at a symbolic resistance level rather than fundamental deterioration. Psychological price points often function as distribution zones for early accumulators, particularly in assets with large retail followings. The intraday reversal—crossing above then below the threshold within hours—suggests weak conviction among buyers at current valuations and possible exhaustion of near-term momentum.
This pattern carries broader implications for Ripple's narrative momentum heading into Q4 2026. The token's proximity to $100B repeatedly (versus decisively breaking through) indicates market uncertainty about its medium-term direction, likely tied to unresolved regulatory clarity around XRP's classification and Ripple's institutional adoption progress. A sustained hold above $100B would signal renewed institutional or macro-driven demand; failure to reclaim it may indicate consolidation before either a deeper pullback or a genuine breakout attempt at higher resistance levels.