XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) has been testing the $1.45 resistance for the past few weeks. The bears keep putting immense selling pressure, forcing the XRP price to pull back anytime it manages to scale above the $1.45 level. Although XRP keeps failing at every attempt to retest that resistance, technical charts are starting to turn favorable.
The token is now at the same technical setup that has triggered every major rally for the past 18 months. XRP is pressing against the bottom of the weekly Ichimoku cloud, and the last two times it cleared this zone, the XRP price surged from $0.50 to $3.40 in late 2024 and from $2.20 to its $3.65 high in July 2025.
So can the third cloud test deliver another rally, or do the bears finally win?
How XRP’s 2024 Cloud Breakout Triggered a 580% Rally
XRP traded between $0.40 and $0.70 for most of 2024, with the SEC lawsuit still active and no ETFs in sight. By early November, XRP was hovering around $0.50 and most of the market had written it off as dead money. Meanwhile, the weekly Ichimoku cloud—a band of price levels that often acts as resistance on the chart—had capped XRP for months, with the cloud’s lower edge near $0.70 rejecting every rally attempt.
Then Trump won the presidential election on November 5, and Gary Gensler announced his resignation as SEC Chair shortly after. The market read Gensler’s exit as the end of the SEC’s appeal against Ripple, since a 2023 ruling had already cleared XRP as a non-security in retail sales.
With the lawsuit overhang lifting, ETF issuers moved in. 21Shares filed for a spot XRP ETF on November 21, then Bitwise and WisdomTree followed on December 2. Ripple also got its RLUSD stablecoin approved by New York regulators that same month.
So XRP cleared the weekly cloud for the first time after those catalysts were triggered. Short sellers got wiped out as the XRP price tore through resistance levels that had held since back, and XRP rallied 420% in November alone, jumping to $2.63 by the month’s end.
The rally kept running into the new year and XRP reached $3.40 by mid-January 2025—a 580% gain from where the cloud broke. And the same setup would form again less than six months later.
How XRP’s 2025 Cloud Breakout Sent It to a New High
After the 2024 rally peaked, XRP drifted lower for months as the post-election excitement faded. By late June 2025, the price was sitting hovering around $2.20 and most traders thought the bull run was over.
However, the same setup from 2024 was forming again. XRP had been consolidating below the weekly Ichimoku cloud for months, and the daily Bollinger Bands—a volatility indicator that tightens before big moves—had compressed to their narrowest reading in over eight months. Catalysts were lining up too—the SEC and Ripple were moving toward their settlement, and spot XRP ETF approvals from Grayscale and Bitwise were starting to look real.
When XRP finally broke through the weekly cloud in late June, the breakout did exactly what the 2024 one had done. The price punched through resistance and rallied 65% in three weeks. By July 18, XRP hit $3.65—its highest level since the 2018 bubble and a new cycle high.
Whenever XRP consolidates long enough below the weekly cloud and a few real catalysts are triggered at the same time, the cloud breaks and the price explodes. And now, the third version of this setup appears to be forming again.
XRP Is Setting Up the Same Cloud Breakout at $1.43
Now XRP is back at the same Ichimoku Cloud setup. The XRP price is at $1.43 and pressing right against the bottom of the weekly Ichimoku cloud. The cloud’s lower edge has stayed near $1.45 as resistance for months, and every rally attempt into that level has been rejected.
However, XRP needs to clear the cloud entirely to confirm the breakout. The top edge is around $1.67, so the XRP price has to push 17% higher from the current price to escape the cloud and trigger the same scale of rally that played out the last two times. The bottom edge of the cloud is right at the current $1.43 price.
The cloud is also thinning, which means the resistance band is compressing—a sign that the resistance holding XRP back is losing its strength. In both prior breakouts, the cloud thinned right before the moves, then expanded once the rally took off. The current cloud is thinner than it has been in months.
So the technical setup is in place, what XRP needs now is the catalyst push that turned the prior two cloud tests into 580% and 65% rallies.
Does XRP Have the Catalysts to Run Like 2024 and 2025?
The 2024 breakout had Trump winning the election, Gensler resigning, three ETF filings, and RLUSD getting approved—all within the space of six weeks. The 2025 breakout had the SEC settlement nearing finalization, ETF approvals from Grayscale and Bitwise looking imminent, and Bitcoin breaking new highs. Both setups had multiple heavy catalysts that were triggered at the same time—and that overlap is what powered the breakouts.
The current lineup also has some catalysts and the biggest one is the CLARITY Act—the bill that would make XRP a permanent digital commodity. The bill cleared the House last summer and finally won over Coinbase, the U.S. Treasury, and the SEC in April after months of pushback. A Senate Banking Committee markup has been the only thing delaying the bill, and on April 23, over 120 crypto firms including Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken, signed a joint letter demanding the committee schedule one.
However, a few smaller catalysts are already lining up. Coinbase will launch its Trade at Settlement tool for XRP futures on May 1, which will let institutions execute large XRP trades at the daily closing price. GraniteShares’ 3x leveraged XRP ETFs are set to launch on May 7 after five regulatory delays in three weeks, and XRP ETFs pulled in 53% of all crypto fund inflows in mid-April.
If the CLARITY Act clears the Banking Committee in May, XRP will get the same combination of regulatory and institutional catalysts that powered the 2024 and 2025 rallies.
The Level XRP Must Clear to Confirm the Breakout
The XRP price needs a clean weekly close above $1.67 to confirm the breakout. Touching the cloud’s upper edge intraday or pushing above for a few days won’t count—the 2024 and 2025 breakouts were confirmed with a weekly close above the cloud.
The next two to three weekly candles could decide it. If XRP sees a weekly close above $1.67 in May, as most of the catalysts get triggered, then it would have a solid chance to move toward the prior breakout zones. However, if XRP loses the $1.30 support on a weekly close instead, the bears will regain control, and the third attempt will fail.
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