XRP price continues to enter the same ceiling and we finally know why. The focus remains stuck on the $2 level. XRP touched it once in early January 2026, recovered near-term trend lines and even briefly moved above it. However, rallies continue to fail. The real issue is not whether XRP can reach $2. It’s whether the market can bear what’s just below it.
On the 12-hour chart, XRP is trading around $1.87 and is down about 4% over the past week. This weakness occurred despite visible buying interest and repeated attempts to recover key levels. To understand why these attempts fail, the story must begin with a key claim.
On the 12-hour time frame, the most important near-term signal for XRP is the 20-period exponential moving average. The 20-EMA follows the direction of the short-term trend. When price recovers and holds with volume, momentum usually shifts higher.
XRP has claimed the 20-EMA several times since December. Most of these attempts failed, but one failed.
On January 1st and 2nd, XRP recovered the 20-EMA on strong buying volume. More importantly, the claim was followed by higher volume green candles, not immediate selling. This confirmation mattered. Between January 2nd and January 6th, XRP rose by around 28%, marking its strongest move of the month.
That successful claim shows that EMA itself is not the problem. The problem is how the claim takes place.
Key Price Structure: TradingView
Want more information about tokens like this? Sign up here for Editor Harsh Notariya’s daily Crypto newsletter.
Compare this with subsequent attempts. On December 9th and again around December 20th, XRP briefly crossed above the 20-EMA, but volume immediately declined. Continued buying never materialized as selling pressure emerged and the price fell back below the average. The same pattern repeated itself on January 28. XRP recovered the 20-EMA on moderate volume, but the following sessions failed to build on it. Selling pressure appeared.
The takeaway is simple. EMA claims need a strong volume of follow-on buyers. Without it, these are temporary signals, not trend changes. But even as volume improves, XRP faces another problem.
Once the XRP price recovers the 20-EMA near $1.94 (current position), the price will immediately move into a heavy supply zone.
On-chain cost data shows a major pool between $1.96 and $1.98, containing about 1.86 billion XRP. This is not a psychological level. It is a concentration of coins last bought in that range. When the price goes back there, many holders sell to reduce returns or reduce exposure.
XRP Sell Wall: Glassnode
This is why EMA recovery alone is not enough. The EMA complaint pushes the price directly into this wall of supply. If the buying pressure is not strong enough to absorb it, the rallies would fail even after the claim.
At the beginning of January it shows the difference. During the Jan. 1-6 rally, forex flows increased, indicating that currencies were leaving exchanges instead of being sent there to sell.
Outflows increased from about 8.9 million XRP to about 38.5 million XRP. This sustained demand helped price move through the supply cluster. Even though the outflow was much smaller than the size of the wall, the over 330% increase in outflow suggests that the mounts may not have sold to the wall.
Outflows become weaker: Sentiment
Recent attempts lack this support and conviction. On January 28th, currency exchange outflows briefly spiked to around 18.1 million XRP, helping the price of XRP to rise during the day. But by January 29, outflows had dropped to nearly 5.4 million XRP.
This explains why XRP continues to stay below $2. The market does not reject the number. She struggles to show the conviction to absorb the offer behind her.
The whale’s behavior adds nuance but does not change the conclusion.
Wallets holding between 10 and 100 million XRP increased their balances from about 11.03 billion to 11.19 billion XRP as of January 21, nearly 160 million. This shows the accumulation. Larger wallets holding more than 1 billion XRP showed mixed behavior, with holdings increasing by around 30 million.
Whales Slowly adding: Sentiment
This tells us that the whales are positioning, not forcing the price.
Compared to a sell wall of 1.86 billion XRP, the current whale build-up and spot demand is not large enough to overwhelm the supply. The buy-in is there, but it’s uneven and short-lived. Without sustained exchange flows, adding whales and expanding the volume, the wall remains intact.
The road map is now clear.
$1.94–$1.95: The First Step. A clean recovery puts XRP back above the 20-EMA.
$1.99: The real trigger. A strong 12-hour close above this level would break the supply group.
Above $1.99, continuation becomes more likely as the selling wall thins, targeting $2.04 and even $2.19.
On the downside, a 12-hour close below $1.80 would invalidate the setup and signal renewed weakness.
XRP Price Analysis: TradingView
XRP doesn’t have to prove it can hit $2. He already did that. It needs sustained buying strong enough to absorb the 1.86 billion XRP sitting just below that level. Until that happens, every comeback will continue to run into the same wall.
Read the original story Why XRP Continues to Fail Near $2 — The 1.86 Billion Wall of Sales Nobody’s Talking About by Ananda Banerjee at beincrypto.com
