- Published on
XRP slips below $1 even as a Korean regional bank adopts Ripple Payments
- Authors
- Name
- DeepHorus
XRP slipped below the psychologically significant $1 mark for the first time since November 2024, trading at 98 cents during Asian morning hours on Tuesday. The decline makes XRP the weakest major token over the past day and week, even as Ripple continues to expand its institutional partnerships. The price slide came alongside an announcement that South Korea's Jeonbuk Bank has adopted Ripple Payments for cross-border business remittances, marking the company's third Korean partnership of the year.
Jeonbuk Bank, founded in 1969 in Jeonju, is the first regional bank in the country to deploy the 24/7 payment service. It follows earlier infrastructure deals with Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank in 2026. Ripple describes the service as delivering near real-time stablecoin cross-border settlement, but it did not specify whether the transfers use XRP or its RLUSD stablecoin. Traditional bank transfers via SWIFT can take days, while Ripple's route settles in seconds to minutes.
CoinDesk data shows XRP traded above $3 at last year's highs and has spent August drifting toward and now through $1. Meanwhile, the total value of tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger stands at about $1.38 billion, of which $845 million is RLUSD. That means the stablecoin accounts for more than three-fifths of all assets issued on the ledger, highlighting Ripple's strategic shift toward its own dollar-pegged token for institutional settlement.
This distinction helps explain why a steady string of Ripple partnerships has done little to boost XRP's price. The company has spent the past year pushing RLUSD as the primary settlement asset for enterprise clients. Jeonbuk Bank will offer the service to importers, exporters, IT startups and online content creators, positioning regional banks as key adopters of blockchain-based payments.
Fiona Murray, Ripple's managing director for Asia Pacific, said in a statement that the deal reflects growing momentum across Korea's institutional financial sector. She noted that regional banks play a vital role in the real economy and are looking for long-term infrastructure partners. CoinDesk asked Ripple which asset the Jeonbuk deployment uses but did not receive an immediate reply.
Despite the bearish price action, derivatives traders remain optimistic. Futures open interest stands at about $2.78 billion, with more than three long positions for every short on both Binance and OKX. This bullish positioning contrasts sharply with social sentiment, which has turned the most negative in three months, setting up a potential volatility spike as the market reassesses XRP's outlook.
The coming weeks will likely reveal whether Ripple's institutional strategy can eventually support XRP's price, or if the token will continue to decouple from the company's growing enterprise adoption. As more regional banks embrace stablecoin-based payments, the distinction between Ripple's infrastructure success and XRP's market performance becomes increasingly important for investors to understand.
