Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

The XRP price continues to reach the same ceiling, and we finally know why. Attention remains fixed at the level of $ 2. XRP touched this indicator once at the beginning of January 2026, regained the short-term trend lines, and even briefly moved above. However, demonstrations continued to fail. The real issue is not whether XRP can reach $2. It’s a question of whether the market can support what lies directly below.
On the 12-hour chart, XRP is trading around $1.87 and is down about 4% in the past week. This weakness came despite clear buying interest and repeated attempts to restore key levels. To understand why these failed attempts, the story must begin with recovering a key.
In the 12-hour time frame, the most important short-term signal for XRP is the twenty-period exponential moving average. The 20-EMA follows the direction of the short-term trend. When price regains momentum and maintains volume, momentum usually moves to the upside.
Sponsored
Sponsored
XRP has recovered The 20-EMA has appreciated several times since December. Most of those attempts failed, but one did.
On January 1 and 2, XRP recognized its 20% average earnings with a strong volume of purchases. Importantly, the recovery was followed by green candles with higher volume, not an immediate selloff. It was an important confirmation. Between January 2nd and 6th, XRP rose by around 28%, marking the strongest move of the month.
This successful recovery shows that the rapid rate of depreciation itself is not the problem. The problem is how to recover.
Want more icon insights like these? Subscribe to publisher Harsh Notaria’s Crypto newsletter here.
Compare this with subsequent attempts. On December 9th and again around December 20th, XRP briefly moved above the 20-EMA, but the volume immediately cleared. Subsequent buying never occurred as selling pressure emerged, and the price fell below the average. The same pattern was repeated on January 28. Recover XRP The 20-EMA is in moderate volume, but the following sessions failed to build on it. Sales pressure appeared.
The background is simple. EMA retracements require a strong volume of follow-through buyers. Without it, they are temporary signals, not changes in the trend. But even as the volume improves, XRP faces another problem.
Sponsored
Sponsored
When the price of XRP regains the 20-20 EMA near $1.94 (current position), the price immediately moves into a supply supply zone.
On-chain cost base data shows a main pool between $1.96 and $1.98, containing about 1.86 billion XRP. This is not a level. It is a concentration of currencies that were acquired last in this range. When the price returns there, many traders sell to reduce breakeven or reduce exposure.
That is why restoring the EMA alone is not enough. The EMA retracement pushes the price directly into this supply wall. If the buying pressure is not strong enough to be absorbed, the rallies will fail even after a recovery.
The beginning of January shows the difference. During the demonstration from January 1 to 6, exchange flows increased, indicating that coins left the exchanges instead of being sent for sale.
Outflows increased from about 8.9 million XRP to about 38.5 million XRP. This persistent demand has helped move prices across the supply pool. Although the flow was well below the size of the wall, the increase of more than 330% in the flow indicates that the owners did not sell to the wall.
Sponsored
Sponsored
Recent attempts lack that support and conviction. On January 28, exchange flows briefly increased to around 18.1 million XRP, which helped… The price of XRP on the rise During the day. But by January 29, the outflows had decreased to about 5.4 million XRP.
This explains why XRP continues to hit levels just below $2. The market does not reject the number. He struggles to project the conviction needed to absorb the stock behind him.
The behavior of the whales adds complexity, but does not change the conclusion.
Wallets containing 10 to 100 million XRP increased their balances from about 11.03 billion to 11.19 billion XRP as of January 21, or nearly 160 million. This indicates accumulation. The largest wallets containing more than 1 billion XRP showed a mixed behavior, with the auction increasing by a marginal 30 million.
Sponsored
Sponsored
This tells us that the whales determine their location and do not pay the price.
Compared to a sales wall of 1.86 billion XRP, the current whale backlog and immediate demand are not big enough to overwhelm the supply. The purchase is there, but it is irregular and short-lived. Without constant exchange flows, whale augmentation and volume expansion, the wall remains intact.
The way is now clear.
XRP doesn’t need to prove it can reach $2. It already did. It needs sustained buying strong enough to absorb 1.86 billion XRP just below this level. Until that happens, every jump will continue to hit the same wall.