XRP price falls despite 102% RWA growth – A warning for Q3?

Ripple could be forming the strongest divergences among the large-cap cryptos.

In accordance with the recent Blockworks report, $XRP boasts one of the best Q2 setups in terms of on-chain fundamentals. However, that strength hasn’t translated into price action, creating a textbook fundamental-technical divergence that could shape $XRP’s Q3 setup.

Notably, $XRP’s positive trend was primarily driven by the surge in stablecoins and tokenization as the total supply increased by 195.4% to $825.5 million, while tokenized RWA value surged 102.5% to $4.46 billion. Additionally, $XRP ETPs witnessed a massive inflow of $253.6 million, contributing to positive momentum.

The key takeaway? This liquidity growth has not been transformed into network utility.

The report revealed that $XRP’s total payment volume declined by 26.6% compared to the previous quarter. Moreover, transaction numbers and active addresses also dropped this year, along with the DEX volume. And this came despite the cost per transaction being only 0.00024 USD on average, which is almost close to zero.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the market underestimated the asset’s potential; hence, $XRP declined by 22% quarter over quarter. The question now is whether the same pattern will repeat itself in Q3, pushing Ripple [$XRP] into another Q2-style underperformance.

$XRP’s Q3 setup is starting to look like Q2

Ripple’s $RLUSD is emerging as the bridge between XRPL’s Q2 and Q3 performance.

According to DeFiLlama, $RLUSD’s market cap has increased by almost 40%, hitting almost 90% of XRPL’s stablecoin market cap with an aggregated supply of over $880 million. Additionally, $RLUSD token constitutes almost 62% of tokenized assets in the $XRP Ledger, which spiked almost 25% during the third quarter, contributing to the total value of RWA.

In essence, $RLUSD appears to be a significant growth driver for XRPL as rising liquidity fuels the tokenization process on $XRP Ledger. But here’s the catch: The actual utilization of the blockchain remains lower than in the previous quarter. As the chart below shows, total transactions in Q3 currently stand at just 87 million, well below the 222 million recorded in Q2.

So while stablecoin liquidity and tokenization dominate the conversation, the network utility is underperforming, contributing to a mixed picture that resembles $XRP’s Q2 performance. In turn, the token is currently facing a similar scenario in terms of technical performance in Q3.

Notably, the bearish trend is evident in the $XRP price movement as the token depreciated more than 3.7% to a new quarter-low of $0.98 at the time of writing. The underlying thesis points to the fundamental-technical disconnect, with the market remaining sidelined on Ripple’s undervaluation.

If this gap continues through the rest of Q3, $XRP could be heading for another red quarter, putting more pressure on its post-election gains.

Final Summary

• $XRP’s stablecoins, RWAs, and ETP are growing, but network activity remains low.
• $RLUSD and tokenization are growing in the third quarter, but transaction volumes remain below their second-quarter levels.