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A price zone that held as a floor throughout all of 2025 is now blocking $XRPfrom recovering. The $1.80 level — once a reliable support — flipped to resistance in January 2026, and the token has not come close to reclaiming it since. Until it does, one analyst says $XRPremains “in deep trouble.”

A Channel Break That Changed Everything

For most of last year, $XRPtraded inside a large parallel channel with a ceiling near $3.45 and a floor around $1.80. The token stayed within those boundaries even as its price started slipping after hitting an all-time high of $3.60 in July 2025. Lower highs and lower lows piled up through the fourth quarter, but $1.80 held.

Then January came. $XRPclosed the month below that level for the first time, and it has not looked back. The $1.80 floor became a ceiling, and every attempt to push higher has run into that wall.

If I zoom out, I still see $XRPin deep trouble.

It is clearly downtrending with a series of lower lows and lower highs, and above all, it is still below that key level at $1.80.

As long as we don’t break this downtrend, we could expect that “no support zone” to be filled. pic.twitter.com/mNuF8O8LWo

— Sjuul | AltCryptoGems (@AltCryptoGems) March 18, 2026

Analyst Sjuul of the AltCryptoGems channel laid out the situation in a recent market breakdown. Zooming out to the daily chart, he pointed to the pattern of lower lows and lower highs that has defined $XRP’s price action since the July peak — a structure that leaves the broader downtrend fully intact regardless of short-term bounces.

A 15% Rally That Still Went Nowhere

$XRPdid manage a stretch of gains between March 9 and 16 — seven up days out of eight, its best run since September 2025. The token climbed 15% during that window, reclaiming $1.50 and closing at $1.54 on March 16.

But the rally stalled almost immediately. A push toward $1.60 ran into resistance at $1.6074 earlier this week, and $XRPhas since pulled back on three consecutive days, now trading around $1.46. The recovery, impressive as it briefly looked, never came anywhere near $1.80.

For context, $XRPhad dropped to $1.27 on February 28 during the initial market reaction to the Israel-Iran conflict before clawing back above $1.50. The March rally was largely a rebound from that low — not a trend reversal.

Two Scenarios, One Number

Sjuul sees the path forward as straightforward. $XRPeither reclaims $1.80 and pushes back inside the parallel channel — invalidating the bearish setup — or it doesn’t, and the downside risk grows sharply.

The level he flags on the downside is the $1.20 to $1.30 zone. That area offered no resistance during $XRP’s explosive November 2024 rally, which is what analysts call a “no support zone” — a price range the market blew through so fast that few buyers established positions there.

Since that rally, the zone has acted as a cushion during dips. If $1.80 continues to hold as resistance, Sjuul suggests $XRPcould fall back toward that range.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

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