XRP has staged a rapid rebound that has pushed the token back toward the $1.50 level after it changed hands near $1 only days earlier. Market statistics place the size of the advance at between 14% in a single day and more than 50% over roughly 65 hours.

The move briefly lifted XRP's market capitalization by about $30 billion, underscoring how quickly capital has returned to one of the cryptocurrency market's most closely watched large-cap assets.

The rally has been accompanied by forced short covering, improving regulatory expectations, and fresh interest from large holders. Short covering — leveraged traders who bet against XRP being forced to buy back their positions — is a dynamic that can feed on itself and accelerate fast moves such as this one. On-chain figures cited across the market also pointed to substantial accumulation, with major wallets reportedly adding 380 million XRP over the course of a single business week.

Regulatory expectations carry particular weight for XRP because of its history: the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's December 2020 lawsuit against Ripple placed the token at the center of one of the industry's most closely followed legal fights, until a federal judge ruled in July 2023 that XRP's programmatic sales on exchanges did not constitute securities offerings and the litigation was formally resolved in 2025. That history has kept regulatory headlines among the most closely watched inputs for the token's price.

South Korea Returns as a Major Source of Trading Activity

South Korean trading activity has become a standout feature of the move. Upbit, the country's largest cryptocurrency exchange, recorded a reported 273% increase in overall trading volume to $1.84 billion — its highest level since March.

👀XRP just did $1.21 BILLION in 24h volume on Upbit South Korea's biggest exchange 31.99% of ALL spot volume. Not Bitcoin. Not Ethereum. Not Tether. XRP. ⏳ Korea has spoken and they're not staying on the sidelines. pic.twitter.com/Xef2vkytxY

— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗫𝗥𝗣 (@BankXRP), August 22, 2026 (x.com)

XRP alone accounted for about $399 million of volume over 24 hours on the platform, exceeding the figures recorded by both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Korean retail demand has historically played an outsized role in XRP rallies, and the latest surge suggests local traders are once again treating the token as a high-conviction momentum trade. Korean trading is concentrated on a small number of won-denominated domestic platforms led by Upbit, which is operated by Seoul-based Dunamu, rather than on global exchanges — a structure that during past demand spikes produced the so-called kimchi premium, in which local prices ran above global averages. That makes Upbit's order flow a widely followed gauge of regional retail appetite.

There are also signs of broader interest building around the XRP Ledger ecosystem. A proposed PermissionDelegationV1_1 amendment has advanced through validator approval as part of the ledger's wider version 3.3.0 upgrade process. Separately, Ripple has backed plans for an institutional credit fund that would use RLUSD — the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Ripple launched in late 2024 and issues on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum — to provide working-capital loans for fintech and payments companies on the network.

XRP's Breakout Signals Meet a Confluent-Resistance Area

On the technical side, XRP has climbed above price levels that had capped it throughout a months-long decline. The token has traded above $1.40 and moved back over key long-term moving averages, while some chart watchers have identified a breakout from a falling-wedge pattern, a formation typically read as a bullish-reversal setup after a sustained downtrend.

That advance does not yet erase the longer-term bearish setup. The 50-day and 200-day moving averages have not completed a bullish crossover — the “golden cross” many chart watchers treat as confirmation of a durable trend change — and the next substantial resistance area sits around $1.85 to $1.95.

Back in June, I asked for 2 minutes of your time to read a thread outlining $XRP's decline into my area of interest and major opportunity near the $1 region. We had not yet swept below $1 at the time, yet price still tagged into the interest zone; supporting the case for… pic.twitter.com/NEFSPIMLiP

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA), August 23, 2026 (x.com)

A sustained close above that range would offer stronger confirmation of the move than a short-lived spike.

For now, the more immediate level to watch is $1.50. Holding near that price after such a fast run would indicate that demand is absorbing profit-taking rather than merely reacting to liquidations. Failing to do so could reopen the path back toward the recent $1 support area. Beyond price, whether Upbit's volumes stay elevated is another marker traders watch, since volume surges of this kind have historically faded as quickly as they built.

Source: DailyCoin