XRP erases its death cross, leads the top 10 with a 14% jump

XRP jumped as much as 14.21% in 24 hours to $1.40, Decrypt reported, making it the best-performing asset among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap today. The daily candle closed above both the 50-day and 200-day EMAs for the first time since XRP's death cross locked in earlier this month.

XRP opened Friday at $1.2681, tapped an intraday high of $1.4300, and traded near $1.40, a 10.52% gain on the candle alone. The broader 24-hour move runs even higher at 14.21%, with a 40.06% gain over the past week, XRP's best week since the 2024 election pump. That puts it ahead of Bitcoin's 7.44% and Ethereum's 4.50% on the day.

The move rides the same Bitcoin short squeeze and Treasury-driven liquidity wave that's moved crypto all week. Bitcoin punched through $72,000 this week on a record short squeeze, fueled by a US Treasury plan to nearly double its long-bond buybacks starting September 9, and now trades above $77,000 with an intraday high of $79,000. Traders have nicknamed the move "QE Lite," since loosening bond markets this way echoes the old Fed stimulus playbook even though it's coming from a different part of government. The same liquidity news also lifted a $275 million Ripple bond sale, with new SEC crypto exemption rules adding to the mix.

A death cross forms when the 50-day exponential moving average slips below the 200-day one, a classic bearish momentum signal. Since XRP's death cross formed, every bounce attempt stalled at or below that ceiling. Today's candle closed above both EMAs entirely, the first daily close above both since the cross formed. That's not quite the same as the death cross reversing: the 50-day average still sits below the 200-day one, so the lines themselves haven't crossed back into a golden cross. Price reclaiming the space above both averages is usually the first domino, the move that has to happen before the averages themselves eventually follow.

• RSI: 83.5, deep overbought territory above the 70 threshold
• ADX: 32.4, above the 25 level traders use to confirm a real trend
• Squeeze Momentum Indicator: flipped to off, meaning the squeeze already fired
• Resistance: $1.43 (today's high), then $1.60 near the descending channel top
• Support: $1.34, then a golden zone between $1.0754 and $1.0965

The rest of the indicator panel backs up the breakout read. RSI, a momentum gauge from 0 to 100 that flags overbought conditions above 70, sits at 83.5, deep enough that a pause or pullback wouldn't be surprising given how fast the move happened. ADX, which measures trend strength regardless of direction, sits at 32.4, comfortably above the 25 level traders use to confirm a real trend, with the buy-side directional line above the sell-side one. The Squeeze Momentum Indicator, which flags volatility compression before a breakout, has flipped to off, meaning the squeeze already fired and momentum is rising.

Bitcoin itself hasn't closed above its own death cross lines yet, which puts XRP out ahead of the coin it usually follows. Resistance sits at $1.43, today's high, then $1.60 near the top of the descending channel that's capped XRP since late 2025. Support sits at $1.34, then a golden zone between $1.0754 and $1.0965, with $0.9862 as a deeper floor. The next real tests land September 9, when the Treasury's bigger bond buybacks begin, and September 15, when the Senate is scheduled to revisit the Clarity Act, timing that overlaps with the resistance levels facing Bitcoin's own rally, tracked in our earlier look at Bitcoin's 140x-faster-than-stocks move.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.