XRP Posts 37% August Rally Amid Record ETF Inflows and Upcoming Network Upgrade

XRP rallied 37% in August 2026, marking its best month of the year and the third‑strongest August in the token’s history. The surge followed a volatile start, a wave of record spot ETF inflows and on‑chain activity, and comes ahead of a major network upgrade scheduled for September 11.

Market catalysts behind the rally

The price rebound began on August 18 after a two‑week decline that saw XRP dip to a yearly low of $0.9874. Three key events triggered the upside:

• U.S. Treasury bond buyback expansion – announced on August 18, signalling continued liquidity support and lifting risk assets.
• White House crypto policy summit – Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse met with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins on August 19, advancing discussions on the CLARITY Act that could classify XRP as a digital commodity under CFTC oversight.
• On‑chain whale activity – CryptoQuant data showed wallets moving more than one million XRP accounted for 55.3% of Binance outflows that week, reducing the exchange supply ratio to 0.03 and indicating large holders were moving tokens to cold storage.

These factors helped push XRP from $1.00 to $1.69 within a week, before settling in the $1.35‑$1.50 range.

Record spot ETF inflows

Spot XRP ETFs recorded a historic week ending August 28, with $110.49 million of net inflows – the largest weekly haul of 2026. Cumulative inflows now exceed $1.66 billion, and total net assets across all funds have risen to $1.44 billion. Weekly trading volume hit $363.03 million, the busiest period since the products launched in November 2025.

Despite the price dip on August 29, ETF investors continued buying, suggesting institutional accumulation rather than retail speculation. Bitwise’s XRP ETF logged $125 million in single‑day volume on August 20, and Goldman Sachs disclosed sizable XRP ETF positions in its latest filing.

Growth of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin

RLUSD, Ripple’s regulated stablecoin on the XRP Ledger, crossed the $1 billion circulating supply mark on August 28, representing 82% of all stablecoin activity on the ledger. Total RLUSD supply across all chains reached $2.08 billion, its first time above $2 billion since launch in December 2024.

RLUSD’s growth has been rapid: from roughly $190 million at the end of Q1 2026 to $676.9 million at the end of Q2, a 257% quarterly increase. The stablecoin generated about $9 billion in transfer volume in the first half of 2026, accounting for 90% of XRPL stablecoin volume. Regulatory approvals in Japan and preliminary MiCA authorization in Luxembourg have expanded its institutional reach.

Upcoming September 11 mainnet upgrade

The fixCleanup3_3_0 amendment, which bundles stability patches for Single Asset Vaults, the Lending Protocol and Automated Market Makers (AMMs), reached 82.86% validator consensus as of August 28. If the consensus holds for the required 14‑day window, the amendment will activate on September 11.

Key fixes include:

• Precision and rounding corrections for vault and lending transactions.
• Elimination of divide‑by‑zero errors and precision loss in AMM deposits, withdrawals and clawbacks.
• Prevention of unauthorized AMM deletions and correct accounting of AMM liquidity in order books.
• Unified freeze checks for pseudo‑account transfers.

These changes aim to remove edge‑case bugs that have kept institutional participants on the sidelines, moving XRPL DeFi primitives from experimental to production‑ready.

Institutional DeFi focus

The XRP Ledger is positioning itself as a compliance‑native DeFi platform for banks, funds and treasury desks. While the XRPL EVM sidechain holds only $25,741 in total value locked as of mid‑July, tokenized real‑world assets on the main ledger have grown to $4.34 billion, a nearly 60‑fold increase in under two years.

Daily transaction volume on the ledger reached 3 million on March 15, driven by AMM pools, tokenized assets and RLUSD‑denominated settlement flows, indicating substantial institutional usage.

Outlook

The market has priced the August momentum but not yet the September 11 upgrade that could solidify XRPL’s institutional DeFi infrastructure. Continued ETF accumulation and the rapid expansion of RLUSD suggest that allocators are positioning for a longer‑term repricing tied to network stability and regulatory clarity.