XRP Fell From $2.48 to $2.29 After Trump's EU Trade Tweet and SEC Delays on ETF Decisions.

Whale stablecoin activity suggests strong buying momentum, with XRP projected to hit $4 by end of 2025.

The XRP price took a hit early morning on May 23, fell from $2.48 to $2.29 after President Donald Trump’s tweet showed apparent anger towards the European Union (EU) over trade issues.

On the same day, another shock came from Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart, who confirmed that, according to a May 22 filing, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again postponed its final decisions on two Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) filings.

Continue reading to learn more about the SEC’s latest move and how it might affect the XRP price.

The affected ETFs from recent action of SEC were CoinShares XRP and Litecoin ETFs. However, the SEC has continuously delayed its decisions on the proposals. Now, the dates extend from May 26 to August 24, 2025.

These decisions follow a pattern of the SEC applying longer timelines to examine the risks and legal compliance of crypto-based financial products. While these are not rejections, they represent a regulatory bottleneck that continues to slow the launch of spot digital asset ETFs in the US.

Also, with Canary and WisdomTree’s XRP applications due later this month, the expectation is clear that more delays might be coming in. Crypto ETFs may have started slow, but they’re now dashing their way forward.

Ripple’s XRP is already surrounded by hype after the blockchain firm bagged a partial win against the commission. The recent blows don’t change its long-term price prediction, though, with XRP remaining arguably one of the fundamentally strongest tokens in the market.

XRP price has surged by a massive 360% in the last year, going from trading at $0.51 in November 2024 to around $2.43 on May 23, 2025. In the meantime, it also knocked out the $3 mark back in January 2025. Now, when writing, the XRP price trades at $2.35, slightly recovering from yesterday’s dip of $2.29, which means bulls will not lose to bears that easily.

On-chain data from the past week highlights that the "percent of stablecoin total supply held by whales with over $5 million USD" has risen from 46% to 53% for XRP. This data means that these "whales" are effectively parking a significant amount of capital in stable assets.

This shift is considered bullish for XRP because it implies these major players are building up substantial reserves of deployable capital. They typically use stablecoins as a staging ground, preparing to execute large-volume purchases of assets like XRP crypto when they identify favorable entry points or anticipate upward price momentum.

Their increased stablecoin holdings suggest an intent to inject significant buying pressure into the XRP crypto market, signaling strong underlying confidence in its future performance and potential for appreciation.

Demand for XRP is, therefore, strong, and with the market still waiting on ten applications for spot-based XRP ETFs in the US, we could see massive moves for the coin later in the year. Based on this, we could see the XRP reach $3 easily by the end of Q2 and $4 by the end of the year.