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XRP (XRP) printed $1.3664 on May 22, down 6.9% in the last seven days, as the US Senate broke for Memorial Day recess without a floor vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
The $1.55 high printed on May 15 after the bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee with a 15-9 vote has been fully erased in seven trading days. The pattern is now established for 2026: XRP rallies on a regulatory catalyst, then fades before it converts into law.
On the same day the Memorial Day deadline expired, Santiment recorded 4,300 new XRP wallets created in 24 hours, the fourth largest network growth spike of 2026, with 43,520 daily active addresses on the network. “Network growth is among the top leading signals to identify reversals,” Santiment wrote. The onchain data and the price are pointing in opposite directions.
📈 $XRP has had 4,300 new wallets created in 24 hours, the 4th largest spike of 2026. Network growth is among the top leading signals to identify reversals.
🔗 Check out XRP’s network growth and level of address activity any time with this handy chart: https://t.co/8jwj1uvJta pic.twitter.com/Fbo1WRKEN8
— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) May 21, 2026
The Memorial Day deadline was the hard legislative window that Senator Cynthia Lummis identified as critical. Without a full Senate floor vote before the recess, the CLARITY Act must now restart negotiations on merging the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee versions when Congress returns. Lummis has warned that missing this window pushes the next viable passage to 2030.
However, the CLARITY Act still needs a full Senate floor vote, which requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, meaning at least seven Democrats must cross over, beyond the two who supported it in committee. Three unresolved blockers remain: an ethics provision on US President Donald Trump’s crypto holdings that the White House has rejected; a merger with the Senate Agriculture Committee version; and House reconciliation on a bill the House already passed 294-134 in July 2025.
The bill needs 60 votes; leaders will not bring it to the floor without confidence in that count. The realistic timeline is a June-August 2026 floor vote per TD Cowen Washington Research Group, with a White House July 4 signing target as the optimistic scenario. TD Cowen’s bear case: the bill slips to 2027 if the ethics fight or vote count stalls.
Polymarket had priced 50% odds of CLARITY Act passage in 2026. Those odds have dropped significantly in the past 24 hours.
The price reaction pattern across 2026 has followed the same trajectory three times.
As Investing.com analysis noted, “None of them have been priced. The price reaction to the CLARITY Act passage faded within 48 hours.”
XRP spent approximately 60% of 2026 trading inside the $1.30-$1.50 range. The $1.55 CLARITY Act spike was the only excursion above that ceiling. The market is now back inside the range.
The Santiment chart covering March through May 2026 shows the context. On March 19, 12,055 new XRP wallets were created in a single day, the largest network growth event of the year.
The price was consolidating at that point before the April rally that carried XRP toward $1.60. On May 20, 4,300 new wallets were created at $1.357, the fourth largest spike of 2026, with daily active addresses holding at 43,520, a level consistent with the elevated activity periods that preceded prior recoveries.
Santiment’s framework is precise: network growth measures new wallet creation, a lagging indicator of adoption but a leading indicator of price direction when it spikes counter-cyclically against falling prices. The March 19 event validated the framework within three weeks. The May 20 event is now the active signal.
Charts and technical data from TradingView show XRP’s full cycle from December 2024 through May 2026. The August 2025 all-time high near $3.84 and the February 2026 trough of $1.19 define the range.
The recovery to $1.60 from $1.19 reversed at the CLARITY Act optimism peak, and the price now sits on the dotted horizontal support at approximately $1.35-$1.38 that has held three tests since March.
XRP trades below all exponential moving averages (EMAs) and simple moving averages (SMAs) from EMA10 ($1.3910) through SMA200 ($1.6924). Only the SMA100 ($1.3981) and Hull moving average ($1.3519) register buy signals. The Ichimoku Base Line at $1.4478 is neutral.
The relative strength index (RSI) at 42.66 sits below 50. Stochastic %K at 10.53, Stochastic RSI Fast at 6.96, and Momentum at -0.0708 all register buy signals from oversold readings. The moving average convergence/divergence (MACD) at -0.0084 remains a sell signal. The average directional index (ADX) at 16.09, well below the 25 directional threshold, confirms that the decline lacks trend conviction.
The network growth signal and the three buy-reading oscillators (Stochastic %K, Stochastic RSI, Momentum) at the tested dotted support create the same mechanical setup that preceded the March recovery. The counter-argument is that the March recovery had a legislative catalyst approaching. The current setup has just missed a legislative deadline.
Spot XRP ETFs have $1.40 billion in cumulative inflows and $1.15 billion in assets under management, per SoSoValue data, confirming sustained institutional demand that the price does not yet reflect.
Ripple’s cross-border Treasury settlement pilot with J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Ondo settled in under five seconds on May 6. The utility layer exists. The legislative catalyst has been delayed, not canceled.
The dotted support at $1.35-$1.38 has not broken.
The XRP Ledger “fixCleanup3_1_3” amendment activates on May 27, 2026.
The floor vote expected in June-August 2026 could be the next sustainable price catalyst for XRP.
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