XRP's first advance into the $1.70 area ended without a breakout, and the failed push has moved the market's focus lower. After a weekly gain of roughly 60%, the question is no longer whether XRP can reach the January ceiling, but whether the token can make $1.55 behave as support first — a step that would give any return to $1.70 considerably more weight than the initial spike into it. XRP is the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple's cross-border payments network, and as the volume figures below show, its price action is shaped by a mix of spot buying and leveraged futures trading.

$1.70 stopped the first charge

On the XRP/USD daily chart, late January was the last time XRP traded around $1.70 before the much deeper decline that followed in February. That history gives the level more significance than an arbitrary round number would carry.

XRP has returned to the area after recovering above its 50-day ($1.09), 100-day ($1.15) and 200-day ($1.27) moving averages. These are among the most widely followed trend benchmarks in technical analysis, and the 200-day line in particular is often treated as the divider between longer-term uptrends and downtrends. Those levels confirm that the broader price structure has improved, although they now sit far below the immediate battle.

The first encounter with $1.70 ended just below the line. XRP's daily RSI reached 87.52, a reading that captures how quickly buyers pushed the market higher. The relative strength index measures the pace of recent price changes on a 0–100 scale, and readings above 70 are conventionally treated as overbought, leaving 87.52 far inside that territory. A pause after such a move would be normal; what matters is where that pause finds support.

The May high is now under pressure

The area around $1.55 overlaps with a swing high from May. Until now, that price sat above XRP as a ceiling, and its role changes only if the market can revisit it, absorb the selling and close back above it.

The path does not have to be a straight line. A brief dip beneath $1.55 would not erase the setup by itself. The stronger signal would be price stabilising in the area and recovering by the daily close, showing that buyers are willing to defend the higher range.

Failure to do so would leave the move to $1.70 looking like a sharp rejection from old resistance. In that case, the chart would still show an impressive rally — but not yet a confirmed breakout.

Real demand behind the move, but futures still set the pace

CoinGlass listed $5.51 billion in XRP spot volume over 24 hours, alongside $20.60 billion in futures turnover. The spot figure — tokens actually changing hands on exchanges — matters: this has not been a rally produced only by a short squeeze or by derivatives traders passing contracts between themselves.

Futures activity is still roughly 3.7 times larger than spot volume. That imbalance does not invalidate the move, but it does make the price more sensitive to changes in positioning. A market led by perpetual contracts — leveraged derivatives with no expiry date — can rise quickly, and give back ground just as quickly when leverage turns.

Open interest, the total value of futures contracts still open, stood at $3.87 billion, while $125.59 million in XRP futures positions were liquidated over the same 24-hour period; liquidations occur when exchanges force-close leveraged positions once the trader's margin is exhausted. Those figures fit the character of the rally: large participation, fast turnover and little room for traders caught on the wrong side.

What would make a second attempt different

A return to $1.70 becomes more convincing if XRP can spend time around $1.55 without attracting another aggressive buildup in open interest. Price holding steady while leverage cools would suggest that the market is clearing late entries rather than losing underlying demand.

Spot activity also needs to remain present. The current $5.51 billion in cash-market volume gives the rally a stronger base than a purely futures-driven surge. If that interest remains firm while XRP moves back toward $1.70, buyers would be approaching the level with more than momentum behind them.

Funding is the final part of the picture. On perpetual futures, funding consists of recurring payments between long and short positions designed to keep contract prices tethered to spot, so sustained positive funding indicates longs paying to stay in the trade. Rapidly rising positive funding combined with expanding open interest would show traders crowding into longs before the breakout has happened. A more restrained funding market would leave XRP less exposed to a sudden flush when it meets resistance again.

The actual break requires a daily close above $1.70, followed by a return to the level that does not immediately fail. Until then, the market has tested the January ceiling; it has not taken it.

Make $1.55 boring, then revisit $1.70

XRP does not need another vertical candle to keep this recovery alive. It needs to turn the May high into an uneventful support area, with buyers absorbing a retest and derivatives positioning becoming less frantic. That would change the character of the next move toward $1.70.

Without it, the first rejection remains the more important signal. With it, XRP would have a cleaner base beneath the level that stopped the rally this week.

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.