XRP News: The price of XRP reached $1.15 on June 4, 2026, its lowest level in four months, falling almost 20% from a range of $1.50 to $1.60 as it repeatedly stalled during the month of May and wiped out more than $10 billion of its market value in a matter of days.
The move led to the liquidation of nearly $30 million of leveraged traders, according to available derivatives data, and was enough to push XRP’s market capitalization below $75 billion, allowing USDC to overtake it as the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by this metric, according to CoinGecko Ratings.
The analytical question is no longer whether XRP fails to breakout; Rather, it is whether the institutional supply that has supported the price above $1.30 since the 2024 US presidential election has now been structurally withdrawn, or whether this is a flow-driven exodus that leaves the asset cheap relative to its network fundamentals.
XRP News: ETF inflow reversal and transmission mechanism behind the decline
The clearest causal thread in these sell-offs runs through institutional product flows. Spot ETFs tied to XRP maintained the longest string of net inflows in 2026 through late April, a dynamic that helped defend the $1.40 level as a structural floor.
This series ended on April 30, and the absence of net flows on May 1 marked the first session in weeks where marginal institutional demand was not there to absorb spot selling – a configuration that, in hindsight, turned $1.40 from support to resistance in a matter of days.
What the streaming news doesn’t prove is that institutions are moving away from XRP permanently; It only shows that the pace of inflows was not sufficient to cope with the broader flows Risk-off sentiment is sweeping the cryptocurrency market With macro traders repricing expectations of a Fed rate cut in the wake of stronger-than-expected US employment data in early June.
A structural paradox worth examining is that the XRP ETF assets under management reached all-time highs in May, even as the spot price remained within a range near $1.43, moving less than 1% on a weekly basis.
Growth in product volume coupled with flat price suggests that inflows are no longer outpacing broader selling pressure – a form of basis pressure that historically tends to precede something, not nothing.
source: SoSoValue
Meanwhile, XRP sentiment metrics have already deteriorated to multi-week lows Even before the June 2 crash, with social volume and crowd ratio readings that Santiment pointed to as bordering on capitulation – a reminder that weak retail demand and stalled institutional flows can coexist for weeks before prices adjust sharply to clear the imbalance.
On the network side, active XRP Ledger addresses rose to a five-week high of 46,767 in mid-May, coinciding with XRP briefly touching $1.55 before being rejected, a discrepancy between increased on-chain usage and the exact price that in hindsight underscored the intensity of the selling pressure at higher levels. Positively, Ripple RLUSD expands into new liquidity corridors It represents the kind of fundamental development that has historically attracted institutional reengagement – but such incentives require a stable macro backdrop to translate into immediate, sustained demand.
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XRP Price Structure: Support Levels, Failed Breakout Zone, and What a $1.40 Recovery May Signal
From a technical standpoint, the $1.20 low is approximately 8% above the early February 2026 low of just over $1.10, which currently represents the closest structural floor with prior price memory.
Analyst Ali Martinez pointed to the breakout from the symmetrical triangle of the ascending trend line as the catalyst pattern, predicting a continuation towards around $1.14, a level that would constitute a retest of the February floor and, if broken on a daily close, would leave no meaningful support in the chart until the sub-$1.00 area is last defended in late 2024.
The $1.30 level, which has been holding as a floor continuously since before the US elections, has now been broken permanently, reclassifying it as near-term resistance rather than support.
Ripple:native continues to move towards my target of $1.14 after breaking out of a symmetrical triangle. https://t.co/QVPCjMEKou pic.twitter.com/cpbZs1H2CY
– Ali Charts (@alicharts) June 2, 2026
On the upside, the $1.40-$1.45 range is the first area where any recovery attempt is likely to encounter significant supply, since it served as the equilibrium range through most of May before the ETF inflow reversal.
A sustained daily close above $1.45 will be needed to indicate that the breakdown is corrective rather than structural, and should be accompanied by a resumption of positive net flows in institutional cryptocurrency products tracking XRP.
Trading volume during Monday’s decline was high compared to the previous two weeks, consistent with a series of liquidations rather than an orderly distribution, an important distinction for interpreting whether the move has fully exhausted forced selling or whether a secondary wave is still possible if $1.14 fails to hold.
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Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to provide accurate and timely information but should not be considered financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify the information yourself and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.
Daniel Francis is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel brings his background in cross-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and detailed guides. It is certified by the Blockchain Council and is dedicated to providing “information gain” that cuts through the market noise to find blockchain’s real-world utility.
