XRP (XRP-USD) price bleeds momentum after slamming into the brutal $2.20 barrier. Traders are stepping away amid fading futures interest and bearish signals, even as Ripple ramps up its long-game—folding in prime broker Hidden Road and backing a trillion-dollar tokenization push it sees as XRP’s shot at financial infrastructure dominance.
XRP Bleeds Traders as $2.20 Barrier Chokes Breakout Hopes
XRP is stuck in no man’s land. After clawing back from a nasty drop to $1.61 last week, the token made a run at $2.20—twice—but got smacked back both times. Traders were watching closely, hoping this level would flip into support and kickstart a rally. Instead, the opposite happened. The price stalled, momentum fizzled, and behind the scenes, futures traders started to quietly back away.
XRP’s April 9 rally was blocked cold at the same resistance zone that capped gains just days earlier. The level isn’t just symbolic—it’s technical. Sitting below both the 50-day and 100-day simple moving averages, XRP needs to break cleanly through $2.20 and $2.28 with strong volume before bulls can even think about retesting highs.
And here’s the kicker: XRP’s own metrics are turning against it. Funding rates are negative. Open interest is drying up. And the token’s RSI hasn’t crossed above neutral. In other words, XRP might look fine on the surface, but under the hood, it’s flashing warning lights.
Negative Funding Rates Signal Deepening Bearish Sentiment
It gets worse. Funding rates have been hovering below zero since early February, according to Glassnode. That means short sellers are so confident, they’re paying longs just to keep their bets alive. It’s the kind of lopsided pressure that rarely ends well for bulls.
At the same time, open interest has plunged from $7.87 billion in January to just $3.08 billion. Fewer active contracts means less liquidity and weaker price support. When markets thin out like this, even a tiny sell-off can trigger massive liquidations. According to CoinGlass, short liquidations are still higher than long ones—but not by much. Bears may be in control for now, but it wouldn’t take much to tilt the scales.
Ripple Builds Long-Term Case with Hidden Road and BCG Report
While the trading floor’s looking shaky, Ripple is focusing on building a name for itself with infrastructure. Last week, it acquired prime broker Hidden Road—a move Ripple CTO David Schwartz called a “defining moment” for the XRP Ledger. It’s all part of the bigger strategy.
Ripple also dropped a heavyweight report with Boston Consulting Group, laying out how tokenization is expected to explode from $0.6 trillion in 2025 to $18.9 trillion by 2033. That’s not just optimism—it’s a 53% compound annual growth rate that Ripple wants to ride.
“The shift to a tokenized economy is turning financial assets from static instruments into dynamic software,” the Ripple-BCG report said. Ripple’s bet? That XRP becomes the default bridge asset in a world of tokenized assets, from real estate to treasuries.
At the time writing, XRP is sitting at $2.00.
