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Q4 2026 began for XRP investors with a classic but painful scenario. Having tumbled from a local peak of $1.50, the token lost its entire summer momentum within a few days and crashed to the $1.31–$1.33 area.
The current plunge on the TradingView chart recorded the price moving below a cluster of horizontal volumes. October once again proved merciless to the asset, but this brutal squeeze has exposed a harsh split in the market. While retail traders in a panic are locking in losses, large funds are using local order blocks for planned buying.
The trigger for the panic that made this month so difficult was macroeconomic data from the US. Unexpectedly hot inflation figures forced investors to urgently rewrite their forecasts: the market is now pricing in a 64% probability of a Fed rate hike at the meeting at the end of the month.
Amid an outflow of liquidity into defensive government bonds, the retail sector began dumping positions en masse.
However, technical analysis of the hourly chart shows that the drop has brought the price straight to a strong support zone. It is precisely in the $1.30–$1.60 range that the key liquidity pools and order blocks are concentrated, where sellers have run into a dense wall of liquidity.
Panic is panic, but the big players are looking at November
Institutional players completely ignored the current depression in the market, betting on a strong infrastructure backdrop and historical cycles. While retail is dumping coins, the corporate triggers of the week — the Nasdaq listing of Evernorth Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: XRPN) with a large XRP fund, Standard Chartered's custody for Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, and the token's integration by the broker DriveWealth — recorded a net inflow of $1.7 billion into spot XRP ETFs.
Price history statistics explain this pragmatism: the current -12% has merely cemented October's status as a traditionally weak period, with a median return of -5%. Big capital is looking further ahead and focusing on November and December, whose average returns have historically been +80% and +63%.
The funds are clearly counting on repeating the November 2024 scenario, when, after similar pressure, the token delivered a parabolic surge.
The final denouement of this standoff will come at the end of the month. The main triggers that will determine whether XRP can reverse the current brutal trend and launch the expected November rally will be the Fed's rate decision and Ripple's annual Swell conference in New York, starting on October 27.
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
