What happened
Ali Martinez, a technical analyst with a sizeable following on X, posted on May 23 that XRP had broken below the ascending support line of a symmetrical triangle that began forming in January. The pattern is built from descending highs and rising lows that compress price into a converging wedge, a setup that typically resolves with a sharp move once one side gives way. XRP gave up the lower trendline late last week.
The token traded at $1.35 on Sunday, per market data cited in the NewsBTC report, with daily volume up 4.23% at $1.96 billion. The breakdown closes out a consolidation range that had pinned XRP between $1.29 and $1.55 since February. Martinez's call: a measured move to roughly $1.14, or a 16.17% decline from spot.
Why it matters
Symmetrical triangles that hold for four months don't break quietly. The pattern that just snapped represented the longest period of two-sided indecision XRP has seen in 2026, and a confirmed breakdown shifts the market's working assumption from range trade to trend trade.
The second concerning data point is whale behaviour. In a separate post, Martinez flagged that XRP transactions worth more than $1 million dropped from 157 to 67 over the past nine days, a 57.3% collapse. Large holders stepping out during a compression phase isn't automatically bearish, but it does mean the next leg won't have the same wallet support that defended the range earlier this year. When whales come back, the direction they come back in tends to set the tone.