New York, March 17, 2026, 17:28 EDT.
XRP held above $1.50 on Tuesday and briefly hit $1.60, its highest in about a month, overtaking BNB to reclaim the No. 4 spot among cryptocurrencies by market value. By late afternoon in New York, XRP traded near $1.53, leaving it with a market capitalization of about $93.9 billion. (CoinGecko)
The move matters now because XRP sits close to the center of Washington’s crypto rule rewrite after years of SEC litigation. The SEC and CFTC on Tuesday issued an interpretation saying federal securities laws apply only to digital securities, or tokenized versions of traditional securities, while Chair Paul Atkins also pushed a safe harbor for token offerings and said it was time to start “delivering the solution.” (Reuters)
That lands on XRP’s old fault line. Ripple’s case with the SEC ended in August 2025 after the agency dropped appeals over a 2023 ruling that XRP sales on public exchanges were not securities transactions, though a judge said institutional sales broke securities law. (Reuters)
The broader market was firmer, but not dramatic. Bitcoin traded around $74,642 and ether around $2,339, while BNB slipped to about $673, leaving XRP one of the more conspicuous moves among the largest tokens.
Part of the latest bid appears to have come from South Korea. DL News reported XRP volumes on Upbit jumped 115% on Monday and rose 81% on Bithumb, with the token accounting for 18% of transactions on both exchanges. Ryan Yoon of Tiger Research said investors in their 40s and 50s were “heavily targeting XRP.” (DL News)
Leverage has rebuilt too. CoinGlass showed XRP open interest, the value of outstanding futures bets, at about $2.84 billion. Decrypt said that figure was up roughly 33% in two weeks, a sign that fresh money has moved back into derivatives markets. (coinglass)
Traders also had company news to work with. Ripple said it was expanding payments, custody and stablecoin services in Brazil and planned to seek a VASP, or virtual-asset service provider, license from the central bank. President Monica Long called Latin America “a priority market for Ripple.” (Ripple)
But the rally is not clean. Citi strategist Alex Saunders said the window for U.S. crypto legislation this year was narrowing, and Reuters reported investors are bracing for a Fed that may stay hawkish as oil holds above $100 a barrel. That mix can cut into appetite for speculative positions fast. (Reuters)
