Remember that feeling when you’ve been waiting for something forever, and suddenly every sign points to “it’s about to happen”? That’s exactly where a lot of XRP holders find themselves right now.
I’ve watched this asset trade sideways for so long that I almost forgot what an impulsive move looks like. Yet over the past few weeks, something has quietly shifted. The charts aren’t screaming yet, but they’re definitely whispering pretty loudly. And the whisper says: the accumulation might actually be over.
The Long Sleep Appears to Be Ending
Let me paint the picture for you. For years, XRP has been stuck in one of the most frustrating major cryptocurrencies to hold. Massive spikes in 2017-2018, then an eternity of range-bound price action while Bitcoin and Ethereum took turns stealing the spotlight. But history doesn’t always repeat – sometimes it just rhymes. And right now, several respected technical voices are pointing out an eerie similarity to the 2017 setup that eventually launched XRP parabolic.
The core idea is simple: XRP has spent an extraordinary amount of time building what analysts call a multi-year accumulation base. Think of it like a spring being slowly compressed. The longer the compression, the more violent the release tends to be.
What the Charts Are Actually Saying
Let’s get into the meat of it. On the weekly timeframe, XRP has been respecting a massive support zone that dates back years. Even with the recent pullback from $2.40-ish highs toward $2.00, price has consistently bounced exactly where you’d expect a mature base to hold.
More importantly, we’re seeing classic coiling behavior. Volatility has contracted to levels we haven’t seen since the final stages of the 2017 base. When you pair that with higher lows over the past 18 months and a clear series of lower highs, you get textbook symmetrical triangle compression. These patterns have a nasty habit of resolving with explosive moves.
“The weekly candle at $1.94 showed a clear inverted hammer – one of the strongest single-candle reversal signals you can get after a multi-week downtrend. The long upper wick proved buyers are still very much in control.”
– Prominent chart analyst
That candle closed last week. Since then, price has quietly reclaimed the $2 level and is once again testing the upper boundary of the range. Coincidence? Maybe. But when you line it up with everything else, it starts looking like choreography.
The RSI Is Not Lying
One of the cleanest signals right now is the weekly Relative Strength Index. Unlike previous bull cycles where RSI printed obvious double-top or bearish divergence before major corrections, we’re seeing none of that.
Instead, RSI has reset beautifully during this multi-year range, currently sitting in neutral territory with plenty of room to run higher. There’s zero evidence of momentum exhaustion. If anything, the indicator is setting up for a textbook breakout above the 70 “overbought” level – something that, in past cycles, marked the beginning of the real parabolic phase rather than the end.
- No bearish divergence on weekly or monthly
- Momentum reset complete after years of ranging
- Structure still printing higher lows
- Volume profile shows massive interest around current levels
When you check all those boxes, you start running out of bearish arguments.
The 2017 Fractal Everyone Keeps Mentioning
Yes, fractal analysis gets overused in crypto. But sometimes the similarity is just too clean to ignore. The current multi-year base mirrors 2017 in several uncanny ways:
- Both periods followed a massive parabolic run
- Both featured extended sideways consolidation lasting years
- Both showed decreasing volatility leading into the breakout
- Both had major legal/regulatory overhang that eventually cleared
- Both printed almost identical weekly candle patterns right before the move
Obviously, history doesn’t repeat exactly. Regulatory environment is different, market maturity is different, liquidity is orders of magnitude higher. But directionally? The setup is uncomfortably similar.
In my experience, when multiple independent analysts start pointing at the same pattern without coordinating, it’s usually means something. Right now, that something appears to be “we’re in the final innings of accumulation.”
What a Real Breakout Would Look Like
Everyone wants to know the magic price target. Truth is, nobody knows exactly. But we can make educated guesses based on measured moves and historical performance.
The most conservative scenario involves a classic breakout-retest sequence:
- Push above $3.30–$3.50 multi-year resistance
- Quick retest of that level as new support
- Acceleration toward the 1.618 Fibonacci extension near $13–$17
- Potential stretch to psychological $27–$30 if we get full-blown mania
That might sound insane today, but remember where we were in late 2017. XRP went from $0.25 to $3.84 in about six weeks. With current market cap and liquidity, a similar percentage move isn’t impossible – it “just” requires the right trigger.
Catalysts That Could Be Lining Up Perfectly
Speaking of triggers, we’re not exactly short on potential catalysts heading into 2025.
The regulatory cloud that has hung over Ripple for half a decade appears to be lifting. Institutional products are gaining approvals left and right. Payment volume on the network continues growing quietly in the background. Even stablecoin and RWA narratives could provide unexpected tailwinds if Ripple positioning plays out.
Add in the broader macro environment – potential rate cuts, Bitcoin cycling higher, altcoin season dynamics – and you start understanding why some analysts are pounding the table.
“This isn’t about hoping for another 2017. It’s about recognizing that the technical setup, the fundamental progress, and the market cycle are finally aligning after years of frustration.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect? The move hasn’t really started yet. We’re still in that awkward phase where most people remain skeptical because they’ve been burned before. That skepticism is exactly what fuels the biggest moves – when the crowd finally capitulates to the upside.
Risks? Of Course There’s Risk
I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention the other side. Crypto is brutal. Patterns fail. Black swans happen. A breakdown below $1.50–$1.70 would invalidate the entire bullish thesis pretty decisively and likely send us back into the range for another year (or worse).
But here’s what I’ve learned after too many cycles: when the weight of evidence leans this heavily in one direction, it usually pays to at least respect the setup. You don’t have to go all-in today, but dismissing it completely feels increasingly dangerous.
The spring has been compressed for a very long time. Springs have a tendency to release eventually.
Whether that release starts this month, next quarter, or sometime in 2025, the technical picture suggests we’re closer to the end of accumulation than the beginning. For XRP holders who’ve waited patiently through the wilderness years, that’s the first real hope we’ve had in a long time.
The question isn’t whether the setup is interesting anymore. The question is whether you’re positioned when the market finally decides it’s had enough of sideways price action.
Only time will tell. But for the first time in years, time might actually be on the bulls’ side.
