XRP trades at just a nod above $1.40 as Ripple ecosystem builds toward a Korean stage while one of its own veterans eyes Wall Street. The token is stuck in a tight band, and today’s news out of Seoul raises a question worth asking: Does event buzz actually move price?

XRPL Korea, organizer of XRP Seoul 2026, unveiled its second speaker lineup today, adding names from Doppler Finance, Flare, t54 Labs, Variational, Evernorth, and Squid. The standout: Evernorth CEO Ashish Birla, an early Ripple team member whose firm is pursuing a Nasdaq listing via SPAC merger with a stated goal of building a $1 billion XRP reserve.

Meanwhile, Flare co-founder Hugo Philion will also speak on smart-contract functionality for XRP and Bitcoin in DeFi. This is a detail that fits the institutional narrative Ripple has been building around the XRP Ledger.

None of this has translated into buying pressure yet. Volume sits elevated near $1.4–$1.8 billion in 24 hours, but that’s indecision, not conviction. The setup below explains why.

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Can Ripple XRP Price Hit $1.80 This Week?

At $1.41, Ripple sits just below its recent range ceiling, with resistance clustered at $1.43–$1.46 and support at $1.39–$1.40. RSI reads 41, neutral, not oversold, while MACD stays bearish, and declining volume on recent upticks hints at a ceiling forming rather than a breakout brewing.

XRP remains above both its 50-day moving average ($1.19) and 200-day moving average ($1.28), which keeps the medium-term trend technically intact even as short-term momentum stalls.

Xrp (XRP)

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The scenarios are straightforward. The best one is a clean break above $1.43 that opens a retest of $1.50, and consolidation above that level could extend toward $1.60–$1.68, with a more aggressive $1.80 target still in play off the $1.32 bounce. Or we could see a continued chop between $1.39 and $1.43 while the market waits for confirmation.

The last scenario is what holders don’t want to see, a failure to hold $1.35 sends XRP toward $1.28, with $1.22 as the next stop if that breaks. Trading volume data will likely confirm direction before headlines do.

LiquidChain Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels

XRP holders watching this range have a reasonable thesis. Evernorth’s Nasdaq path and a $1 billion reserve target are real long-term signals. But at a market cap already pricing in institutional adoption, the upside from $1.40 to $1.80 is a 28% move, not a multiple. That’s the ceiling problem large-cap holders keep running into: real catalysts, capped returns.

That’s where earlier-stage infrastructure plays start to look different. LiquidChain ($LIQUID) is a Layer 3 protocol fusing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana liquidity into a single execution environment. It’s a unified layer where developers deploy once and access all three ecosystems, rather than building separate bridges for each.

Current presale price sits at $0.014953, with $960K raised so far. Core features include Single-Step Execution and Verifiable Settlement, aimed at cutting the fragmentation that plagues cross-chain DeFi today.

Investors can research LiquidChain directly before deciding.

Source: Crypto News