What happened
Bill Morgan, an Australian lawyer who has spent years posting on XRP regulatory matters and was a frequent commentator during the Ripple-SEC case, told his followers that the recent price correlation between Bitcoin and XRP is running at 96%. U. Today reported the comment on Tuesday at 13:42 UTC.
Morgan's framing was blunt: XRP is currently tracking BTC almost tick for tick, and the idea that it's trading on its own story doesn't fit the tape right now. He did not attach a dataset, a time window, or a methodology to the figure. That matters, because a 30-day rolling correlation and a 7-day rolling correlation can disagree sharply, especially around event days.
As of writing, neither Ripple nor any major data vendor has published a 96% figure to corroborate the claim. Treat it as Morgan's read of the screen, not a measured statistic.
Why it matters
The XRP holder base has built its identity around the idea that the token has idiosyncratic catalysts: the SEC case, ODL adoption, RippleNet payments volume, the stablecoin rollout. A 96% correlation with Bitcoin says none of that is in the price right now. It says XRP is a beta vehicle.
For a trader, that's a different instrument than the one the XRP community usually describes. It means hedges built around XRP-specific news are mispriced, and it means the token's drawdown risk in a BTC selloff is closer to one-for-one than the diversification pitch suggests. The headline looks like a flex from a friendly voice.