XRP cracks $1, futures pile in

August 11, 2026

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Russia proposes crypto access, but only three fit

Key points:

  • The Bank of Russia proposed allowing retail access to Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT on regulated exchanges under its new digital asset framework.

  • Non-qualified investors would face a 300,000-ruble annual purchase cap per intermediary, while qualified investors would have no purchase ceiling.

News - Russia is moving toward regulated retail crypto trading, but the opening comes with a deliberately narrow gate.

The Bank of Russia’s August 11 draft directive names Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether’s USDT as the first digital assets proposed for organized trading. The proposal follows legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin on August 4 that gives the central bank authority to decide which cryptocurrencies can enter regulated markets.

The list is not final. Public comments remain open until August 24.

Three make the cut - Eligibility hinges on market capitalization, average daily trading volume, and at least five years of price history on overseas platforms. The central bank said the restrictions are intended to shield non-qualified investors from sharp and unpredictable price swings.

For now, those requirements leave the public list at BTC, ETH, and USDT.

Retail gets limits - Non-qualified investors could purchase up to 300,000 rubles, roughly $3,650, per year through each broker, crypto exchange service, or asset manager. Qualified investors would face no equivalent ceiling for assets traded on exchanges or over-the-counter markets.

Both groups would have to pass a risk-awareness test before transacting.

Trading is not spending - The framework would expand legal investment access without turning crypto into domestic money. Russia’s new law still prohibits cryptocurrency payments for ordinary goods and services, while separate provisions permit certain cross-border settlements. Its main provisions are scheduled to take effect September 1.

XRP cracks $1 as futures crowd in

Key points:

  • XRP briefly slipped below $1 on August 11 for the first time since November 2024, reaching an intraday low of $0.99 on Binance.

  • Futures open interest jumped $171.74 million in one hour as traders positioned ahead of the August 12 U.S. CPI release.

News - XRP’s return below $1 came with two overlapping developments: a fresh bridge exploit and a sudden burst of derivatives positioning around a major macro event.

The token touched $0.99 at 14:58 UTC, extending a difficult year in which it has fallen roughly 46% despite several developments across Ripple and the XRP Ledger ecosystem.

Bridge flaw, not XRPL - The price breach followed disclosure that an attacker drained 199,916.3 XRP from the Coreum bridge on August 9 through 94 payments over 97 minutes.

The exploit stemmed from a missing destination-address check in the bridge’s relayer software. Relayers signed valid transactions based on flawed evidence, allowing attacker-controlled transfers to be credited as deposits. The XRP Ledger itself was not compromised, and Coreum suspended the bridge pending repairs.

Leverage piles up - At the same time, XRP derivatives activity accelerated sharply. Aggregate futures open interest rose $171.74 million, or 20.46%, within one hour on August 11.

The positioning came ahead of the August 12 U.S. Consumer Price Index release, while XRP hovered around the psychologically important $1 level. Funding remained positive at 0.0080%, showing that long exposure had not disappeared even as price weakened.

Large holders also accumulated more than 380 million XRP over seven days, adding another layer of tension around whether $1 would become resistance or recover as support.

Gold rallies, Bitcoin slips, Tether contracts

Key points:

  • Gold climbed to a nine-week high as retail money flowed into GLD, while Bitcoin dropped below $64,000 ahead of U.S. CPI data.

  • USDT’s steep supply contraction points to weaker crypto liquidity, although CryptoQuant cautions that the relationship with Bitcoin is not necessarily causal.

News - Gold is drawing the attention Bitcoin has struggled to hold this August, but the divergence is more complicated than a simple rotation out of crypto.

Gold reached $4,435 per ounce on Tuesday, its highest level since June 5, while BTC/USD fell back below $64,000. On August 5 alone, SPDR Gold Shares attracted $50 million in retail inflows and $637 million overall, compared with $244.4 million across U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Not exactly anti-gold - Peter Schiff argued that gold’s renewed rally and Bitcoin’s weakness support his long-running “anti-gold” thesis. CryptoQuant data complicates that claim: Bitcoin’s 90-day rolling correlation with gold remained positive despite BTC’s lackluster August performance.

Bitcoin also remained capped near its 50-month EMA around $65,827 ahead of Wednesday’s U.S. CPI release.

USDT supply shrinks - Another constraint is forming inside crypto itself. CryptoQuant said the 30-day SMA of USDT’s 60-day market-cap change stood at minus $4.88 billion as of Monday, after the raw 60-day contraction reached minus $5.72 billion on July 13.

The firm cautioned that shrinking USDT supply does not prove it caused Bitcoin selling. Historically, however, the deepest contractions have appeared closer to selling exhaustion than fresh acceleration.

Gold token, smaller retreat - Tether is also closing Alloy, its XAUT-backed lending platform, on September 17. Only five positions remained open as of August 10, with about $850,000 in gold collateral. XAUT itself is not shutting down, keeping the winding-down lending platform separate from Tether Gold’s broader market.

Ravencoin bug hands miners the rollback

Key points:

  • A consensus flaw let invalid blocks onto Ravencoin from August 7, putting several days of transactions at risk of reversal.

  • Mining pools 2Miners and RavenMiner are rebuilding from block 4,487,775, despite Ravencoin developers asking for a more recent recovery point.

News - Ravencoin’s latest crisis is no longer just about a software bug. It is also about who gets to decide which version of the blockchain survives.

The first known invalid block appeared at height 4,487,776 at 15:44 UTC on August 7 after attackers exploited a flaw that allowed vulnerable nodes to accept blocks they should have rejected. RVN later fell roughly 20% to near $0.0029 as exchanges restricted transfers.

Pools choose the history - 2Miners and RavenMiner, which together control a majority of Ravencoin’s hash rate, are mining a replacement chain from block 4,487,775, the last known-good point before the exploit.

If that chain becomes dominant, roughly three days of blockchain history could be reorganized. Ravencoin’s development team asked the pools to restart from a more recent point to limit disruption, but the request was declined.

Users carry the risk - Transactions confirmed after block 4,487,775 should be treated as vulnerable to reversal. Some may return to the mempool and be mined again, but Ravencoin warned that this is not guaranteed.

Upbit and Bitvavo suspended RVN deposits and withdrawals, while the project advised exchanges to keep transfers halted until the chain stabilizes.

Patch came from outside - The emergency fix was released by 2Miners rather than Ravencoin’s core team, reinforcing the concentration shaping the recovery: the pools are helping repair the network while also determining how far back its accepted history may be rewritten.

Apple’s Starlink Update Sparks Huge Earning Opportunity

Apple just secretly added Starlink satellite support to iPhones through iOS 18.3.

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Their global expansion is perfectly timed, and investors like you still have a chance to invest in their pre-IPO offering at $0.52/share.

With their recent 32,481% revenue growth and newly reserved Nasdaq ticker, Mode is one step closer to a potential IPO.

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Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.

The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.

Interesting facts

  • A Swiss train machine can print you a Bitcoin wallet: Switzerland’s SBB ticket machines currently sell Bitcoin and Ethereum paper wallets worth CHF 20 to CHF 500, 24/7, with the crypto wallet printed directly by the machine.

  • Finland turned drug-case Bitcoin into Ukraine aid: Finnish Customs sold 1,889.1 BTC forfeited from narcotics and doping investigations for about €46.5 million in 2022. The government had planned to direct the sale proceeds toward assistance for Ukraine, with its supplementary budget even referring to the humanitarian and reconstruction component as the “Bitcoin package.”

  • Bitcoin’s ledger was quietly carrying more than money: A peer-reviewed 2018 study found more than 1,600 files embedded in Bitcoin’s blockchain, over 99% of them texts or images, documenting how the transaction ledger had also been used to permanently store arbitrary data.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Canton (CC)

Key points:

  • CC’s 5.31% rebound reclaimed the 20 EMA, but the still-bearish EMA stack left the 50 EMA as its first major recovery test.

  • EWO stayed above zero as volume picked up, though momentum remained weaker than during the rebound’s initial burst.

What you should know:

CC revived its recovery with a sharp move from around $0.095 to $0.1004, reclaiming the $0.0975 20 EMA before running into the $0.1011 50 EMA. The broader structure remained bearish, with the 20/50/100/200 EMAs still stacked below one another.

Fresh institutional context accompanied the rebound. NYSE President Lynn Martin confirmed work on an on-chain settlement platform for tokenized securities using Canton Network, while CC’s Bitrue listing also went live.

EWO remained positive at 0.66 and volume strengthened on the latest advance. $0.101-$0.103 is the immediate resistance zone, followed by the $0.1077 100 EMA. On the downside, $0.095-$0.098 is the first support area to watch.

XRP (XRP)

Key points:

  • XRP lost its recent $1.02 range floor and briefly slipped below $1 as selling volume expanded.

  • Squeeze Momentum deepened to -0.0174, while Parabolic SAR stayed overhead at $1.035, keeping short-term pressure tilted lower.

What you should know:

XRP’s latest weakness became more decisive once price broke below the $1.02 area that had anchored its recent consolidation. The selloff briefly reached $0.991, while rising red volume and a deepening negative Squeeze Momentum reading showed downside pressure had strengthened.

Demand-side signals also softened. Spot XRP ETF net inflows fell to zero on consecutive tracking days, while XRP Ledger daily transactions dropped roughly 44%, from 2.81 million to 1.57 million.

The $0.991-$1 zone is the immediate support test. A rebound first needs to recover $1.02-$1.025, while the $1.035 Parabolic SAR keeps $1.035-$1.04 as the higher resistance area.

Chainlink (LINK)

Key points:

  • LINK’s first pullback from $8.70 left the breakout intact, with price still holding comfortably above its bullish EMA stack.

  • Squeeze Momentum stayed positive at 0.086 after expanding with the breakout, while volume remained elevated on the retreat.

What you should know:

LINK’s retreat to $8.52 tested how much of its high-volume breakout buyers could retain after price surged out of the $8.20-$8.35 consolidation zone. The EMA structure remained bullish, with the 20 EMA at $8.35 leading the 50/100/200 cluster below.

The move followed Standard Chartered initiating Chainlink coverage with targets of $13 by end-2026 and $200 by 2030. BitGo also migrated more than $7.7 billion in WBTC infrastructure onto Chainlink CCIP.

Squeeze Momentum remains positive at 0.086. $8.48-$8.52 is the immediate support zone, while $8.68-$8.70 is the first resistance test. A deeper pullback brings the $8.30-$8.35 EMA cluster into focus.

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