XRP Watched the Fed Hand Out Lollipops and Still Got Picked Last in Gym Class

Crypto markets consolidated Thursday after a macro-driven rally triggered by a 0.4% drop in the June Consumer Price Index — the steepest single-month decline since April 2020. That reading collapsed Fed rate hike odds for July from 31% to single digits, sent equities higher, and gave digital assets room to run. Wall Street added fuel: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citi all reported Q2 earnings that beat expectations. Bitcoin had already cleared the $64K resistance that had capped it for weeks, as Decrypt reported Tuesday, while Ethereum surged nearly 6% in a single session, touching $1,900. Thursday's pullback, with most top 50 tokens off less than 3%, reflects cooling rather than reversal. Ondo was the standout, climbing more than 14% to lead the top 100 by market capitalization on tokenization momentum.

XRP did not participate in kind. The token created by Ripple co-founders opened Thursday at $1.11257, reached an intraday high of $1.11722, and traded at $1.10650, down 0.54%. It failed to break the price resistance set during the Crypto Winter, and the broader market's pause has left it with little cover. When capital re-enters crypto after a risk-off period, the flow typically concentrates in Bitcoin first and Ethereum next — a pattern visible this week. Ethereum posted the stronger recovery after a deeper drawdown, and the Altcoin Season Index at 45, below the 50 threshold that signals BTC/ETH dominance, confirms that money has not yet rotated to altcoins. In early July, a $602 million short liquidation event pushed Bitcoin back toward $62K; XRP managed only a 3% move while Ethereum and Solana roughly doubled it.

XRP's specific catalyst is also missing. The Clarity Act, U.S. legislation that could classify XRP as a commodity and open the door to institutional ETF demand, missed its expected July 4 Senate floor vote, and no new date has been set. Without that policy anchor, XRP is trading on macro sentiment alone — and trailing Ethereum in that comparison.

Technically, XRP opened the current candlestick at $1.11 and trades at $1.10, with a market capitalization of roughly $69 billion, down roughly half a percent. Price is testing a weak support zone within a bearish leg that ran from $1.18 down to $1.05, leaving a binary setup: a hold above $1.08 could target $1.13, while a loss of $1.08 reopens the path to $1.06 and the $1.02 floor. The ADX reads 13.3 on a 0–100 scale, well below the 25 threshold that confirms a true trend, signaling that directional momentum remains absent.