XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) has been waiting on a trigger all year. The token has churned between $1 and $2 since January, fading at the same resistance every time it rallies, with the bulls catching every dip to prevent it from going below a dollar. What’s missing is regulatory clarity, and there’s only one bill that fixes that: the CLARITY Act.
Now, after months of political stalemate, the White House itself is pushing for a deadline by July 4. The administration wants the bill signed by then, but lawmakers are split, banks are pushing back, and 60 Senate votes are far from locked. But for the first time, the catalyst XRP holders have been waiting on has a date set by the White House itself. Where the XRP price goes after July 4 depends on that date holding up.
Why the White House Wants the CLARITY Act Signed by July 4
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt picked the date deliberately. July 4, 2026, marks America’s 250th birthday, and the White House wants a signed bill on the desk that day. Witt made the case at Consensus Miami in early May: if the U.S. doesn’t write the rules now, China will, and the rest of the world will end up following whoever moves first.
The main challenge with getting it done by July 4 means everything has to line up perfectly. The Senate Banking Committee needs to mark up the bill the week of May 11. After that, the full Senate gets four working weeks in June to clear a 60-vote floor vote.
Once that’s done, the House votes one more time to merge its July 2025 version (which already passed 294-134) with whatever the Senate sends back. All of those steps have to be cleared in just under eight weeks, and if any one of them stalls, the July 4 target goes with it.
On the other side of that, the political backing is stronger than it’s ever been. Senator Bernie Moreno set the same deadline a day before Witt did, while Senator Cynthia Lummis flatly declared the bill “not a future priority—the priority.”
CFTC Chair Mike Selig wants a July 4 signing, and Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott calls the bill “in the red zone.” Even Witt’s own framing tells you how thin the margin is: “There’s not a lot of slack left in the rope right now.”
Three Hurdles Standing Between the Bill and the July 4 Deadline
The bill is stuck on three different fights, and any one of them could push everything past July 4.
The Democrats: Gillibrand’s Ethics Demand
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the lead Democratic negotiator, took the same Consensus Miami stage and gave a different timeline. Her prediction: a final vote “in the first week of August if we’re lucky, otherwise September.” She also drew a hard line: no Democratic vote unless the bill includes an ethics provision banning crypto holdings by the president, vice president, and senior officials.
The provision is aimed at Trump’s TRUMP memecoin and his family’s involvement in World Liberty Financial. The White House has said it will accept ethics rules that apply to everyone—but it rejects anything that targets specific officeholders. The two positions are still miles apart.
The Banks: Five Trade Groups vs. the Compromise
Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks released their stablecoin compromise on May 1. Three days later, five major banking trade groups—including the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute—came out publicly against it.
Their argument is that the compromise still allows crypto platforms to pay rewards that drain bank deposits by as much as 20%. Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn read the move differently: banks helped negotiate this compromise for months, and now they’re rejecting it. That looks less like a good-faith amendment and more like a strategy to delay the bill entirely.
The Senate Floor: 60 Votes and One Holdout
Even if the Banking Committee marks the bill up the week of May 11, it still needs 60 votes on the Senate floor. Tim Scott has secured Tillis and most Republicans, but Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana hasn’t committed yet.
Even the committee vote isn’t fully locked. Add the unresolved DeFi provision that law enforcement groups still oppose, and the path through the Senate is far from clean. None of these hurdles is fatal on its own, but together, they explain why even Witt is publicly hedging.
Where the XRP Price Could Go After the July 4 Deadline
XRP is trading at $1.39, with a wall of supply just above at $1.45 that continues to reject rally attempts. Here’s where we see the XRP price heading by July 4 depending on three different circumstances.
Bill Signed by July 4
Once institutions have the legal clarity they’ve been waiting on, XRP needs $4 to $8 billion in cumulative ETF inflows to push into the $5-$10 range. XRP ETFs recorded their best monthly inflows so far in April—$81.59 million—but that’s still an order of magnitude short of what the $4-8B model needs.
The realistic 60-to-90-day outlook for XRP after a July 4 signing is more grounded. The first move is breaking the $1.45 supply wall, which has $3 billion in sell orders parked above it. Once that is absorbed, $the 1.80 (the 200-day moving average) is the next stop.
From there, the XRP price could aim for $2.50-$3 by August and target $4-$5 by year-end. XRP hitting $5+ requires sustained ETF flows to follow the bill’s passage.
Bill Slips to August
If the markup happens but the final vote slips to “first week of August if we’re lucky,” then things could drag for a little longer. Standard Chartered’s revised XRP price prediction of $2.80 becomes the realistic ceiling for the year if that happens. XRP ETF inflows might pause until the bill passes, and XRP will most likely chop between $1.40 and $2.00 through August.
That said, once the bill is signed, the same $4-8 billion ETF model applies—just on a shorter timeline. That means, XRP could still aim to reach the $4-$5 target as a stretch but not impossible if inflows pick up quickly.
Bill Stalls in 2026
If banks block the bill or Gillibrand’s ethics provision can’t get resolved, then things could get ugly. Bitwise has modeled $1.40 as XRP’s average price through the year-end if no legislation passes—essentially flat from current levels. Meanwhile, Standard Chartered’s $2.80 becomes nearly unreachable if XRP loses its only crypto-specific catalyst.
If the XRP price slips below $1.30, the next major support is $1.28. Below that, $1.20 is the psychological floor, and the February crash low at $1.11 is the worst case under macro stress. XRP would also go back to moving with Bitcoin until Congress decides to revisit the bill—likely 2027 at earliest, possibly 2030 if a new Congress has to restart the process.
What Smart Money Is Doing Before the Deadline
While retail watches the senate calendar nervously, large holders haven’t waited for an answer—they’ve been quietly positioning for one. On Binance, 91.4% of XRP outflows are now driven by whale-sized transactions. Across all centralized exchanges, the figure is around 90.5%, which is the highest reading since 2024.
Meanwhile, retail outflow share has collapsed to just 8.4%. Back in July 2025, when XRP topped at $3.65, the picture was the opposite—retail piled in while whales were selling at the top. Today, with the XRP price at $1.39, large players are doing the buying. Wallet data also backs it up: 42 new wallets holding 1 million+ XRP have appeared since January.
Moreover, institutional players seem to be stacking XRP funds. Goldman Sachs is now the largest disclosed institutional XRP ETF holder with a $153.8 million position. Total holdings across the all spot XRP ETFs have crossed $1.3 billion. Evernorth, a Ripple-backed company on 473 million XRP, is preparing to go public on Nasdaq via a SPAC merger—giving institutions another way to get exposure without buying the token directly.
Polymarket traders now give the bill a 67% chance of becoming law by year-end—up from 47% three weeks ago. The smart money positioning isn’t proof the July 4 deadline holds, but it’s a bet that the bill will eventually clear, deadline or not.
What the Next Two Months Mean for XRP
The CLARITY Act has been weeks away from passage for nearly a year. Every analyst prediction, every CEO timeline, and every confident senator deadline has been missed. After May, the Senate has fewer than two months of working time before midterm politics envelops everything else.
The bill either could clear the Senate in the next four weeks or it won’t at all this year. If the bill passes the Senate this month, XRP gets the catalyst it has waited for over a year, and a July 4 signing will be genuine. If it doesn’t, the waiting game continues, and this could be months or even years.
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