XRP Price Weakens as Crypto Market Awaits Clarity

In brief

• XRP continues to underperform the rest of the crypto market.
• The price of XRP is still stuck in a formation traders call a death cross, a classic bearish indicator.
• Besides the macro headwinds, for the Ripple-linked token, it may just come down to a lack of Clarity.

It was a quiet, red-tinged day across crypto, and XRP spent it near the bottom of the pile.

While the market as a whole has been in a flat, choppy state for the last several weeks, it’s XRP—the cryptocurrency created by the founders of payments company Ripple—that continues to underperform: rising less when others are gaining, and falling harder when others drop.

The reason could be the market current lack of clarity—or, rather, the delay of the long-awaited Digital Assets Market Clarity Act.

The Clarity Act, which if passed would create the first formal legal framework for crypto assets in the United States, matters more for XRP than it does more established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The legislation would formally classify XRP as a digital commodity, stripping the regulatory ambiguity that has weighed on institutional demand for years. Traders price that in faster than lawmakers move.

The Senate was unable to vote on the bill before the August recess, dashing what little hope remained that the legislation would be passed this year. However, Majority Leader John Thune did file cloture on the bill late last week, before lawmakers headed out, locking in a procedural vote for September 15.