- Ripple trims weekly gains as traders await XRP Futures debut on CME.
- Weak network stats and long liquidations spark XRP price consolidation.
- Strong account holders’ growth, Ripple rumors keep buyer optimism intact.
- Looming Bear Cross and rejection at $2.65 clash with a bullish Falling Wedge, adding to XRP trader confusion.
Ripple (XRP/USD) takes offers to refresh intraday low near $2.47 during Thursday’s European session as it extends pullback from key resistance, with traders eyeing May 19 XRP Futures launch on CME.
Early next week, XRP will join Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on CME’s Futures list, attracting institutional interest. Traders may be using the pullback to buy low before the listing spike.
XRP price faces resistance at $2.65 and a pullback ahead of the big event, partly due to declining network activity. Sentiment’s data shows a drop in user addresses from 16K in January to just 3,400 by May 7, signaling weaker demand.
Further, long liquidations of $8.44 million, compared to just $1.69 million in shorts, per the latest Coinglass data, also contribute to the recent decline of the XRP/USD pair.
XRP price sees lower trading volume, falling from $19.5 million on Monday to $8.69 million, along with a 1% drop in Open Interest (OI) to $5.41 billion, suggesting profit-taking before the CME Futures launch.
Additionally, Ripple’s recent move to use Ripple USD(RLUSD) instead of XRP in its Hidden Road Setup is weighing on prices. Ripple acquired prime broker, Hidden Road, one of the fastest-growing prime brokers around the world April for a whopping $ 1.25 B.
However, an 11% growth in XRP holders and ongoing rumors about Ripple’s IPO and BlackRock’s XRP ETF, despite denials, keep buyers hopeful ahead of the major event. On the same line, UBS’s recommendation to include crypto in investment portfolios adds further fuel to the optimism.
Overall, Ripple’s win over the US SEC, rising institutional demand, and the upcoming XRP Futures listing on CME could drive XRP/USD bulls, despite short-term pullbacks.
Technical Analysis: Daily chart shows bulls slowing down
Ripple’s retreat from a 10-week-old horizontal resistance, close to $2.65, joins a pullback in the Relative Strength Index (RSI) 14 line to tease bears.
However, the XRP is yet to negate the early-week confirmation of a “Falling Wedge” bullish chart pattern, which in turn joins the bullish signals from the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator to keep buyers hopeful.
Source:Tradingview
For sellers to take control, XRP needs to break below the $2.40 wedge line, especially if it confirms the “Bear Cross” between the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) and the 50-day SMA.
If that happens, a drop to the $2.17-2.15 SMA region could follow, though the wedge’s bottom line and troughs marked in November, respectively near $1.54 and $1.27, will be tough nuts to crack for the XRP/USD bears.
On the flip side, a clear break of $2.65 will quickly propel XRP/USD toward the $3.00 and then to March’s peak of $3.02. Should the Ripple buyers manage to keep the reins past $3.02, the yearly high of $3.40 and the $4.00 psychological magnet will gain the market’s attention.
