XRP saw a firm upward move over the past 24 hours, rising to $2.30 and adding roughly $2 billion to its market capitalization after Ripple confirmed a $500 million strategic investment at a $40 billion valuation.
Intraday trading briefly pushed the asset to $2.38, with market cap touching $143 billion, before price consolidated near current levels at $138.68 billion, marking a 3.13% gain on the session.
The market’s response reflects a shift in institutional perception. The funding round, led by entities linked to Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group, reinforces the view that Ripple’s infrastructure is gaining relevance across cross-border settlement and institutional crypto liquidity provisioning. A valuation of this scale, secured in current market conditions, indicates confidence in Ripple’s business model and long-term positioning.
Flow dynamics were further influenced by confirmation of a Mastercard settlement pilot on the XRP Ledger, using RLUSD in collaboration with WebBank and Gemini. The pilot is focused on measuring settlement efficiency in credit card transactions, an area where latency, auditability, and compliance matter more than theoretical throughput claims.
Unlike general blockchain adoption narratives, this initiative places XRPL within an operational payments environment, where settlement finality in 3–5 seconds offers a tangible efficiency improvement over legacy rails.
XRP price analysis
The timing of this shift is notable. XRP entered the announcement period after a 22% decline over the past month, driven primarily by broader risk-off sentiment rather than protocol-specific weakness. The combination of capital inflow and real-world settlement testing provided the catalyst required to reprice the asset from oversold conditions.
Short-term momentum now focuses on the $2.40–$2.44 region, corresponding to the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement from the late-September high. A sustained close above this level would indicate that market structure has transitioned from reactive to constructive. Failure to reclaim it would likely keep XRP in a consolidation range while underlying fundamentals continue to firm.
