Should You Buy XRP Now? The Data and a Decision Framework

We can't tell you whether to buy XRP, and neither can anyone else writing about it. What follows is the case on both sides, the numbers as of 12 August 2026, and the part most articles on this question leave out.

On 11 August 2026, XRP traded below $1 for the first time in two years, touching roughly $0.99 before recovering to about $1.02. That's more than 73% below its July 2025 peak of around $3.65, and it caps six consecutive losing months. Most pages ranking for this question were written before that happened.

Where XRP sits today

Market cap is around $63.9 billion, which ranks XRP as the sixth largest crypto asset. XRP was #3 in early 2025 but lost out to BNB and two stablecoins in August.

Year to date, XRP is down about 38%. Bitcoin is down about 30% over the same window, and Ethereum about 45%. So XRP sits between the two majors, a milder story than the peak-to-trough figure suggests. Both framings are true. Its all-time high is $3.84, set in January 2018.

The bull case

The lawsuit is over. On 7 August 2025 the SEC and Ripple jointly dismissed their appeals, ending a five-year case. Ripple paid a $125 million civil penalty for institutional sales, and the court held that XRP is not a security when it trades on the secondary market. One detail most coverage drops: a permanent injunction restricting Ripple's own institutional XRP sales is still in force.

The ETFs launched. Seven US XRP ETFs now trade, from Bitwise, Canary Capital, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale and others, the first arriving in September 2025.

Ripple the company is thriving. Roughly $4 billion of acquisitions between 2023 and 2025, conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter in December 2025, and a February 2026 ranking as the ninth-largest IPO candidate at around $50 billion.

The bear case

The ETF flows tell an uncomfortable story. US XRP ETFs have pulled in $1.51 billion in cumulative net inflows. Assets under management sit at about $993 million.

Read those together. Roughly $520 million has been erased by price decline, leaving assets about 34% below net inflows. On average, everyone who bought the ETF thesis is underwater. Flows have dried up too, with the week ending 8 August bringing $1.01 million, down 93% week over week.

Escrow adds supply every month. More than 30 billion XRP, about a third of total supply, sits locked in Ripple's escrow. One billion releases monthly and Ripple typically re-locks 700 million, leaving around 300 million entering circulation. That's 3.6 billion a year from a single holder that is a net seller by design.

Partnerships and XRP usage are different things. More than 300 institutions use RippleNet, but only about 40% of them use XRP itself for liquidity. The rest use the network for messaging and fiat routing and never touch the token. Ripple's own stablecoin, RLUSD, reached a $1.64 billion market cap by June 2026 and holds 88% of stablecoin liquidity on the XRP Ledger. It settles payments without needing XRP at all.

That's the analytical heart of it. Ripple is assembling a bank, and almost none of what it's building requires anyone to hold XRP. Buying the token isn't buying the company.

The question underneath the question

Most people searching this already own XRP, and they're really asking one of two things.

If you're sitting on a large long-term gain, selling costs you real money. Crypto is treated as property, so a sale after more than a year is taxed at long-term capital gains rates of 0%, 15% or 20% in 2026, plus a 3.8% net investment income tax above $200,000 of income for single filers. Sell after holding for less than a year, and it's ordinary income tax, which can be as high as 37%( just for federal tax).

If you bought in 2025 or 2026, you're underwater, and the math inverts. Selling at a loss is a deduction that offsets other capital gains. And because crypto is still exempt from the wash sale rule as of 2026, you can sell, book the loss, and buy back the same day.

This cuts against what a lending company would prefer to tell you: if you're underwater on XRP, borrowing against it is probably the wrong move. Selling is tax-positive and you can re-enter immediately.

When borrowing against XRP does make sense

The case where a loan beats a sale is narrow. You hold a large unrealised long-term gain, you believe in the position over years, and you need cash for something shorter: a tax bill, a property deposit, a business expense.

Borrowing isn't a taxable event. Loan proceeds are a liability rather than income, and pledging collateral isn't a disposition because you keep ownership. That rests on general US tax law, not a crypto-specific ruling.

Two things break that. Liquidated collateral is a sale, so you owe tax on the gain while the lender has the proceeds. And repaying in appreciated crypto is a disposal.

The first point is why the loan-to-value ratio matters more than the interest rate. Some platforms advertise up to 90% LTV on XRP. On an asset down 73% from its high, that's a forced liquidation with a countdown on it, producing the worst outcome available: a taxable sale where you never see the cash.

How Lantern handles XRP

We never lend out borrower collateral. Your XRP sits in BitGo's insured cold storage with coverage up to $250 million. BitGo Trust Company holds an OCC charter and is publicly traded.

On an XRP-backed loan:

• 13% APR, flat, no token-holding tiers to qualify

• 40% max LTV, deliberately conservative on an asset this volatile

• 72-hour grace period at the 65% margin-call level. Nexo, Arch and Coinbase give you none

• 0% liquidation fees, against Arch's 2% and Coinbase's 4.38%

• 2% origination fee stated up front, no early repayment penalties

Funding lands same day, typically within minutes, with a $1,000 minimum loan size, no maximum loan size, with a 12-month term and no prepayment penalty.

Whether XRP is worth buying at $1 is a question about the next few years, and nobody can answer it for you. Whether you should sell what you already own comes down to your cost basis and your tax position, and that one you can actually work out (probably with a tax professional).

Borrow against your XRP here: https://lantern.finance/borrow

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and current law. Always consult a qualified tax professional and your financial advisor before making lending or tax decisions.