XRP Falls from $1.55 Even After CLARITY Act Passes, Will it Retreat to $1.30 Again?

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XRP (Ripple), which surged to $1.55 during intraday trading amid unprecedented regulatory tailwinds but then sharply declined, is now stuck in a $1.45 box range, blocked by resistance, causing anxiety among investors. Unable to overcome the $1.51 to $1.57 range, which acts as a strong supply wall in the spot market, the expectations of large-scale capital inflows due to institutional integration and concerns about macroeconomic headwinds are in a fierce standoff.

According to the investment media TradingNews on May 15 (local time), the U.S. Senate Banking Committee passed the CLARITY Act, a U.S. cryptocurrency market structure bill that officially classifies Ripple as a federal digital commodity, by a vote of 15 to 9. This lays the groundwork for resolving long-standing legal risks, and decentralized prediction market Polymarket predicts the bill's passage in the full Senate this year has increased from 62% to 73%. Standard Chartered has even proposed an ambitious target price of $8.00, contingent on the bill's passage and $10 billion in XRP spot ETF inflows by 2026, but due to lingering market skepticism, this has not yet been reflected in the current price.

Immediately after the bill's passage, the price of XRP surged 8% intraday, climbing to $1.55, its highest level since March, but profit-taking quickly led to a drop below $1.47 within a day. This reconfirmed the supply zone between $1.51 and $1.57 as a strong resistance level, failing to break through it for the fourth time this year. If XRP closes above $1.57 on a daily basis, it could open the way to $1.70 in the short term, but failure risks a retreat to the $1.30 floor, testing the support of the Ichimoku Kinko Hyo baseline at $1.4477 and the 20-day moving average at $1.4153.

Contrary to the price trend, on-chain data from within the market indicates strong accumulation by whales. The concentration of large whale wallets holding over 10 million XRP has risen to an 8-year high of 68.5%, while exchange holdings have fallen to a 7-year low of 1.7 billion units, significantly reducing selling pressure. Furthermore, institutional long-term capital inflows continue, with $18.52 million flowing into the Bitwise-led XRP spot ETF in a single day. However, technically, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) shows an upward trend on a weekly basis, but the daily Average Directional Index (ADX) is 12.48, indicating weak trend strength, and the Relative Strength Index (RSI) shows overbought signals, suggesting a short-term breather is needed.

This trend aligns with the overall stagnation of major virtual asset markets, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). BTC fell to $79,405, blocked by the 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) wall at $82,000, and ETH is also stagnating near its annual low at $2,227.88. Despite moves by authorities like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to ease regulations, the overall cryptocurrency market is being held back by concerns about tightening. This is because the macroeconomic environment has become extremely hostile to risk assets, with recent U.S. 30-year Treasury yields skyrocketing to 5.12% and the Dollar Index reaching 99.27.

Consequently, despite experiencing the greatest institutional tailwinds in history, XRP has encountered macroeconomic resistance and failed to find a breakthrough. Experts predict that XRP will move within a confined corridor between $1.45 and $1.59 over the next five trading days, with the probability of a green light within the next week diagnosed as less than 20%. While the strong fundamentals of accumulation by large investors and regulatory clarity have laid the groundwork for a medium-to-long-term rise, a short-term massive rally will ultimately require a reversal in the macroeconomic climate, coupled with a decisive breakthrough of the $1.57 resistance level with strong trading volume.

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