- Ripple signs Jeonbuk Bank as its first regional Korean client for Ripple Payments, but the settlement asset remains undisclosed.
- Korean banks are increasingly building won stablecoin corridors on rival networks like Kaia and Solana, bypassing XRP.
- XRP price hovers near $1, with ETF inflows collapsing and the CLARITY Act vote delayed, while ledger activity and stablecoin supply grow.
- Analysts see limited upside to $1.40–$1.60 in the near term, far below the $5 targets floated by some influencers.
Ripple has been making headlines in South Korea, but the excitement isn’t translating into XRP price gains. On August 18, the company announced a partnership with Jeonbuk Bank, making it the first regional lender in the country to adopt Ripple Payments for cross-border remittances. The deal was framed as a win for regional businesses that have long relied on the slow and costly SWIFT network. Yet, XRP’s price barely reacted, slipping to $0.98 on the same day before recovering to around $1.01.
This disconnect between corporate news and token performance isn’t new. Ripple has signed multiple deals across Asia and Europe in 2026, but the XRP token has lost more than 45% of its value since January. The core issue? Most of Ripple’s payment corridors don’t require XRP as the settlement asset, and Korean banks are increasingly choosing stablecoin rails built on competing networks. So what’s really happening on the ground, and does any of it matter for XRP holders?
What the Jeonbuk Bank Deal Actually Covers
Jeonbuk Bank, founded in 1969 and based in Jeonju, is the dominant lender in North Jeolla Province. It’s part of JB Financial Group and serves a customer base that includes import-export companies, IT startups, and online content creators—businesses that have historically sent money through correspondent banking, where transactions can take days to clear. Ripple’s announcement says the bank will now use Ripple Payments to offer near real-time cross-border settlement. Fiona Murray, Ripple’s Managing Director for Asia Pacific, emphasized that regional banks are vital to the real economy and that this partnership extends fast settlement directly to local businesses.
However, neither Ripple nor Jeonbuk disclosed which digital asset actually settles these transactions. The press release mentions XRP and RLUSD only in boilerplate language at the end, and no specifics were given about payout providers or messaging rails. This ambiguity is significant because it means the deal could run entirely on fiat and stablecoin arrangements, with no direct impact on XRP demand. Park Choon-won, President of JB Jeonbuk Bank, called the partnership a “new growth engine” that would help the bank become a digital finance leader, but stopped short of mentioning any token.
This is Ripple’s third Korean agreement in 2026, following Kyobo Life Insurance for tokenized government bond settlement and Kbank for institutional wallet infrastructure. But each deal is distinct: payments, custody, and tokenization are separate product lines. The cumulative effect on XRP’s price remains negligible, as none of these agreements require institutions to hold XRP as an investment asset.
Korea Is Building Won Stablecoin Rails Without XRP
The bigger picture in Korea is that banks are racing to build won-pegged stablecoin infrastructure, and they’re doing it on networks other than the XRP Ledger. KB Financial Group, the country’s largest banking group, completed a pilot in May that converted a won stablecoin into a dollar stablecoin via Kaia’s on-chain liquidity to settle a remittance to Vietnam. The transfer took under three minutes and cost roughly 87% less than SWIFT, but it bypassed XRP entirely. KB is also working with Circle on converting won into USDC, and Shinhan Card has partnered with the Solana Foundation.
Kbank signed an agreement with HashKey and BPMG targeting a Korea-Hong Kong corridor, while BNK Busan Bank tested its own version through the K-STAR alliance with AhnLab Blockchain, OpenAsset, and Lambda256. Eight major lenders, including KB Kookmin, Shinhan, and Woori, have formed a coalition to issue a won-pegged token, while Hana leads a rival alliance. Jeonbuk Bank itself ran a won stablecoin proof-of-concept with Danal Fintech back in March 2025, but there’s been no public follow-up.
This pattern is clear: Korean financial institutions are choosing Kaia, Circle, and Solana for their stablecoin experiments. None have paired with the XRP Ledger. For XRP to benefit from Korea’s push toward digital won, either Ripple would need to name XRP as the settlement asset for a corridor, or a won stablecoin would need to launch on the XRPL. Neither has been announced, and with the Democratic Party and Financial Services Commission agreeing to reintroduce the Framework Act on Digital Assets in September, the race is on to see which chain gets the first legally recognized won stablecoin.
The XRP Price: Defending $1 for Now
On the price front, XRP is clinging to the psychologically important $1 level. It has closed above $1 every day since November 2024, a streak that reached 635 sessions as of mid-August. But that streak nearly snapped twice this month, first on August 11 when a bridge exploit drained roughly $200,000 through a connection between the TX Chain and the XRP Ledger, and again on August 14. Buyers stepped in before the daily close both times, but the technical picture is deteriorating.
The 50-day exponential moving average has crossed below the 200-day EMA, forming a death cross on the daily chart. This is a bearish signal that confirms sellers have controlled the short-to-medium-term trend for weeks. On the weekly chart, the 50-week EMA is still above the 200-week EMA, meaning the golden cross that underpinned the post-election rally is technically intact, but the gap is closing fast. The weekly Average Directional Index (ADX) reads 33.7, indicating a strong trend in place—and it’s pointed in the wrong direction for longs.
Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick cut his 2026 XRP price target from $8 to $2.80 in the first quarter, and the token is down more than 70% from its July 2025 cycle high of $3.65. Whales reportedly bought roughly 380 million XRP near the $1 level over the past week, but they’re doing so alongside $1.5 billion in freshly opened leveraged long positions—a setup that could trigger forced liquidations if $1 breaks decisively.
Revenue Drops and Stablecoin Growth: A Contradictory Picture
Zooming out to the network’s fundamentals, the first half of 2026 painted a contradictory picture. The XRP Ledger settled $159.9 billion in transactions, which is real, large-scale volume. But fees generated from that activity fell 81.6% year-on-year, from $6.43 million to $1.18 million. The bulk of that decline came from trading fees paid to liquidity providers on the network’s automated market maker, which fell 80.3%, and NFT royalties, which dropped 69%. Ordinary transaction fees—what everyday users pay to send XRP—fell a more modest 66.3%.
Meanwhile, the stablecoin base on the ledger grew 1,131% over the same period. RLUSD, Ripple’s regulated dollar stablecoin, reached $1.56 billion in total supply by June 30, with 52% held on the XRPL, up from roughly 10% a year earlier. This expansion is laying the groundwork for institutional credit on XRP Ledger and tokenized real-world assets, but it hasn’t translated into XRP demand yet. Aviva Investors, abrdn, Ondo, and Société Générale have all placed tokenized products on the ledger, and compliance infrastructure like Permissioned DEX and Multi-Purpose Tokens are now live. But institutions can use RLUSD or tokenized Treasuries for settlement, completely bypassing XRP.
Another key metric is supply dilution. XRP’s circulating supply grew 5.5% year-on-year through escrow releases, the lowest rate among its payment peers like Stellar (8.8%) and TON (9.6%). Only Tron generates enough fee revenue to offset its supply growth. For XRP holders, the net effect is a 5.5% annual drag at current fee levels, meaning the price needs to rise at least that much just for holders to break even on a purchasing-power basis.
Can XRP Reach $5 by October? The Realistic Outlook
A crypto influencer with 552,000 followers predicted on August 17 that XRP would hit $5 before the end of October, citing adoption, institutional ETF demand, and Ripple’s 75-plus global licenses. To reach $5, XRP’s market cap would need to climb from $62.3 billion to roughly $313 billion—a 405% rally in ten weeks. That’s more than XRP was worth even at its all-time high of $3.84 in January 2018, when it had far fewer tokens in circulation.
The reality check is sobering. XRP ETF inflows have collapsed by more than 96% since launch, with just $3.27 million recorded in the first ten trading days of August. Even at May’s peak pace of $131.94 million per month, ETF buying can’t move a $62 billion market cap to $313 billion. The CLARITY Act, which would classify XRP as a commodity under federal law, is the most significant catalyst, but it has missed three deadlines already and faces a tough cloture vote on September 15 requiring 60 votes in the Senate. Galaxy Research puts the odds of the bill becoming law in 2026 at just 10%.
In a best-case scenario, if the bill passes, ETF inflows return to May levels, and Bitcoin bottoms in September, analysts see XRP reaching $1.40–$1.60 by the end of October. That’s less than a third of the $5 target. The more likely base case is XRP holding between $1.00 and $1.20, with a bearish scenario seeing it drop to $0.80–$0.95 if the vote is delayed again and outflows continue. Historically, losing the $1 support has led to extended periods of weakness—from November 2021 to November 2024, XRP stayed below $1 for nearly three years.
Looking at all the data, Ripple’s corporate expansion is real, but it’s not creating direct XRP demand. Korea’s stablecoin rails are being built on Kaia, Circle, and Solana, not the XRPL. The ledger’s revenue is contracting even as stablecoin supply grows. ETF inflows are drying up, and regulatory clarity remains elusive. While the infrastructure being assembled could eventually generate demand through collateralization or DeFi activity, that day hasn’t arrived. For now, XRP remains highly volatile and dependent on adoption outcomes that aren’t yet visible in the price data. The token has defended $1 for 635 days, but the technical indicators and fundamental trends suggest the path of least resistance is still sideways to down, unless something fundamental changes in Washington or on the ledger itself.
