Ripple’s Business Is Booming — So Why Are Chart Watchers Saying Your XRP Could Sleep Until 2028?
Ripple keeps signing banks and growing RLUSD, but a chart pattern suggests XRP's price could stay stuck in a range for two more years.
If you’re holding XRP and wondering why the price feels stuck even as Ripple keeps announcing new partnerships, you’re not imagining things. XRP is currently trading in a narrow $1.06 to $1.10 range, and a fresh technical read of the charts suggests that tight, sleepy trading pattern could stick around for a lot longer than most holders would like — possibly until August 2028.
The forecast comes from an analysis using Bollinger Bands, a tool that measures how tightly a price is coiled before it makes a big move, applied to XRP’s chart on TradingView. The bands are currently squeezing inward on longer time frames, a setup that looks a lot like what happened between 2022 and 2024 — a stretch when XRP spent 791 days grinding sideways before finally breaking out to a peak of $3.55 and then correcting back down.
Why the price and the business are telling different stories
Here’s the paradox: Ripple’s actual business looks healthy. The company has launched Ripple Mint, a platform built around its RLUSD stablecoin, which now has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. Banks are increasingly plugging into Ripple’s payment infrastructure.
But that’s exactly the catch for XRP holders. Banks using Ripple’s rails for settlement don’t necessarily need to buy and hold XRP itself to do it. So Ripple-the-company can keep growing while XRP-the-token sees little fresh demand.
That disconnect shows up in the ETF numbers too. Weekly inflows into U.S. spot XRP ETFs have faded down to somewhere between $2 million and $12 million — a modest figure that signals institutional buyers aren’t exactly rushing in right now.
Washington isn’t helping either
Regulatory clarity, or the lack of it, is adding to the drag. Prediction market Polymarket currently puts the odds of the CLARITY Act passing this year at just 42%. Without that legislation, the kind of regulatory certainty that could bring bigger institutional money into XRP stays out of reach for now.
Put all of that together — quiet ETF flows, banks bypassing XRP for settlement, and a stalled regulatory push — and you get a fairly convincing case for why the chart pattern might actually play out as predicted.
What this means if you’re holding XRP
There are really two ways this could go. In the bearish case, the lack of organic bank demand for XRP itself, cooling ETF inflows, and continued regulatory limbo push retail holders to grow impatient and sell, leaving the price to grind sideways with no real catalyst.
In the bullish case, large wallets — the “whales” — quietly absorb the supply that discouraged retail investors are dumping, building a stronger price floor underneath the market. If that’s happening, it could set the stage for a sharper move once the technical squeeze finally releases.
For everyday holders, the takeaway isn’t that XRP is doomed — it’s that patience may be the name of the game. Ripple’s expanding footprint in banking and stablecoins is a genuinely positive long-term sign for the ecosystem, but it doesn’t automatically translate into token demand in the short run. If the historical cycle repeats, the technical model suggests XRP’s next real breakout might not arrive until the end of summer 2028, meaning anyone hoping for a quick pop may want to recalibrate their expectations.
Read more: XRP Slips to $1.09 as Congress Drags Its Feet on Crypto Rules — Here’s What It Means for You
