XRP underperforms as Digital Assets Market Clarity Act faces Senate delays

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.

The bill still needs 60 votes to clear the filibuster, and with Democrats holding out, analysts call its 2026 odds a long shot. That's a different picture from late July, when reports that President Donald Trump would accept the bill's stalled ethics provision sent Polymarket odds of passage from 32% to 43% and sparked a broad rally.

The numbers in the crypto charts today show the cool-down. In the top 10 by market cap, XRP was the worst seven-day performer at -4.96%, while Solana gained 3.64% and Bitcoin rose 1.17% over the same stretch. XRP also slipped 1.24% on the day, against a market that was mostly flat. The token is acting like the Clarity trade is being unwound.

XRP price: What the charts say

XRP is trading at $1.0282, at around a $64 billion market cap, down 0.17% on the day and the weakest of the top 10 over the past week, pinned just above the $1.0128 swing low in a market that still carries a death cross—a bearish signal that traders pay close attention to.

The trajectory is the story. On the daily chart, XRP has logged lower highs and lower lows for weeks, bleeding from the late-June area near $1.3, down to where it sits now.

The July 21 Clarity pop that briefly tagged $1.15 failed and rolled straight back over. That bounce now looks exactly like what bull traps are supposed to look like, not a trend change. Price isn't building a base; it's drifting just above the $1.0128 floor, and a market this trendless can compress longer than most traders expect.

The average price of the last 50 days (EMA50) still sits below the 200-day average (EMA200), in the formation traders call a death cross. Exponential moving averages smooth out average price over a set period; when the shorter-term average trades under the longer-term one, it tells you the medium-term trajectory remains down.

Bulls need a daily close back above the EMA cloud to change that reading structurally, and they don't have it. To achieve this, XRP would need to spike at least more than 8%.

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, reads 38.2. RSI is a momentum gauge on a 0–100 scale: above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold. At 38.2, XRP is below the neutral 50 line and leaning bearish, but not yet in the oversold zone that tends to attract bargain hunters.

The Squeeze Momentum Indicator is off, which means there is still some structure in the bearish trend. With the squeeze inactive and momentum negative, there's no volatility coil loading to fire XRP upward. That's not the signature of a squeeze about to fire upward.

The Average Directional Index, or ADX, sits at 14.6. ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction; readings under 20 mark a directionless, choppy tape where false breakouts and stop hunts are common. At 14.6 the trend has no real conviction behind it—though the directional indicators tilt bearish (DI- sits above DI+), which lines up with the death cross rather than fighting it.

The bull case: a daily close back above the Fibonacci resistance at $1.0486 is the first proof buyers are showing up, opening a run at the EMA cloud and then the golden zone at $1.0887–$1.1066. That requires the Clarity Act story to reaccelerate, not just linger.

The bear case: XRP loses the $1.0128 swing low and the round $1.00 figure gives way, which opens a measured move toward the lower-$0.90s. The death cross and the negative Squeeze momentum both point the same way. For now, the path of least resistance does not appear to be up.

The bull case exists, but it's thin. XRP is a Clarity Act proxy trading like the bill's odds just fell to 21%, and the chart underneath agrees.