Ripple’s Political Waiting Game and AI Payments Bet Converge as XRP Lingers Near Lows

The most pressing catalyst for XRP in the near term arrives in Washington on July 17, when President Trump meets senators to push the CLARITY Act toward a vote. The legislation, which would reallocate oversight of digital assets between the SEC and CFTC, faces a steep climb: Republicans hold 52 Senate seats and need seven Democratic votes to reach the 60-vote threshold. Senator Elizabeth Warren has demanded an updated disclosure of Trump’s crypto income — which topped $1.4 billion in 2025, more than double the prior year — by July 23, arguing the bill could entrench conflicts of interest. Prediction markets reflect the uncertainty: Polymarket pegs the chance of passage in 2026 at 41%, Kalshi at 36%, while the odds of a Senate vote at all stand at 79%. Senator Cynthia Lummis nonetheless expects a floor vote within the coming week.

Away from the political logjam, Ripple has quietly secured a seat at the table for the future of machine-to-machine payments. The company joined the board of the x402 Foundation, a Linux Foundation project launched on July 14 that governs the x402 protocol — an open standard that revives the HTTP 402 status code “Payment Required” for use by AI agents. When an agent requests a paid service, the server responds with an amount, accepted currency, and wallet address; the agent’s wallet signs and sends the payment. Ripple pays $200,000 annually for premier membership and a permanent seat on the governing body, putting it alongside Amazon Web Services, American Express, Circle, Mastercard, and Shopify. RippleX manager Markus Infanger noted that the company has spent months building infrastructure that already allows agents to settle in XRP and the dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD. The foundation is network-neutral, meaning XRP competes on equal footing with USDC, card networks, and other blockchains — but the board seat gives Ripple a direct hand in shaping how the standard evolves.

That influence matters because Ripple is arriving late. Coinbase’s Base network has already processed more than 119 million x402 payments, and Solana around 35 million; both have a year’s head start and conduct most of their volume in USDC. The XRP Ledger’s one million agent transactions look modest by comparison, though the network only crossed that threshold shortly after the protocol launched. Ripple’s own preparatory work includes the June release of an “XRPL AI Starter Kit” for developers, a subsequent AI hub from affiliate t54.ai, and an invitation from Mastercard to join its agent-payment network as one of over 30 launch partners.

Institutional momentum elsewhere is also building. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which manages assets worth $114 trillion, has executed its first stock-tokenization trades on XRP-compatible infrastructure, with Citadel Securities handling the transactions. Citadel invested $500 million in Ripple in October 2025. RLUSD’s market capitalization now exceeds $1.5 billion, and Ripple is participating in the UK Treasury’s Wholesale Digital Markets initiative, which could generate an annual GDP impact of £33 billion by 2035. CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently disclosed that the SEC lawsuit filed in December 2020 nearly forced the company to shut down and cost roughly $150 million in legal fees.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying XRP?

Yet for all the structural activity, XRP’s price tells a different story. The token sits at $1.08, down 2.45 percent on the day and barely 7 percent above its 52-week low of $1.01 set in late June. It trades 24.43 percent below its 200-day moving average of $1.44, suggesting the medium-term downtrend remains intact. The July 2025 high of $3.65 is now more than 70 percent away. Technical analysts at Traders Union cite oversold signals and a test of the support zone, while COINTURK NEWS flagged a TD Sequential buy signal at $1.109 on July 16, noting that July has historically been a strong month for XRP.

The fundamental backdrop is equally mixed. Exchange-held XRP has dropped from 3.76 billion to roughly 1.6 billion tokens over nine months — a seven-year low driven by self-custody and ETF inflows. Spot ETFs have pulled 970 million XRP out of circulation, and whales have accumulated another 1.53 billion tokens over six months, now controlling 74 percent of the supply. Despite this shrinking exchange liquidity, the price has not risen — a sign that demand remains tepid. XRP ETFs saw $7.18 million in outflows last week after negligible inflows of just $107,000 previously.

Analysts see the x402 board membership as a validation of XRP’s long-term utility narrative rather than an immediate price trigger. RLUSD gives agents a stable dollar-denominated accounting unit; XRP acts as native fuel — every payment consumes a small fee, every wallet must hold a reserve, and XRP bridges liquidity between currencies. The value of tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger has surpassed $4 billion, and the network now hosts over eight million activated accounts. Whether these building blocks translate into sustained transaction volume on the scale that Base and Solana already command will determine whether the token’s story catches up with its institution-driven groundwork. For now, all eyes remain on the Senate’s calendar.