XRP price rose 6% to a three-week high of $1.42 on Thursday, becoming the strongest gainer among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

According to data from crypto.news, XRP (XRP) price rallied to $1.42 on Thursday, April 16, with its market cap moving back above $87 billion and reclaiming the spot of being the 4th largest crypto asset in the market. The token still lies nearly 23% lower than where it began this year.

While hopes of de-escalation in the U.S. and Iran war have lifted the market sentiment, triggering a bounce across most crypto assets, XRP price could specifically benefit from three catalysts over the coming sessions.

First, the most significant hurdle for XRP has been regulatory ambiguity over its security status, a long-standing challenge that the CLARITY Act could solve. As such, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to mark up the bill for later this month.

The bill is important as if it clears this committee, it would formally codify XRP as a digital commodity, moving it from permitted existence to protected legality. This would effectively remove the remaining litigation discount and provide a clear legal green light for major institutions to deploy capital.

Second, XRP price stands to benefit from renewed institutional demand for the token while retail investors remain cautious.

Data from SoSoValue show that spot XRP ETFs have recorded their fourth consecutive day of inflows for the first time since March, drawing in a combined $38.86 million within the period. This brings the combined assets under management for U.S. spot XRP ETFs to over $1.25 billion.

Such steady accumulation from smart money often precedes a sharp move upwards when it absorbs the remaining supply of tokens held in exchanges, currently at multi-year lows.

Third, the token could also gain from increased network utility. Notably, Ripple is growing its presence in the RWA industry by integrating the RLUSD stablecoin and Zero Knowledge proofs into the XRP Ledger.

On April 14, Ripple announced a partnership with Kyobo Life, one of South Korea’s largest insurers, to pilot tokenized government bond settlements. The deal, along with the launch of an Institutional DeFi Portal in beta, now allows banks to settle large transactions privately and instantly on the ledger, providing a massive boost to the long-term value proposition of the ecosystem.

XRP price analysis

On the daily chart, XRP price has broken out from the upper side of a symmetrical triangle pattern. Typically, a breakout from the upper side of the pattern means that the period of consolidation has ended and a new bullish trend is beginning.

The MACD lines have pointed upwards, a sign that buyers are gaining strength and momentum is shifting in favor of the bulls.

On the contrary, the SuperTrend indicator has flashed red, which means the market could see some minor resistance or short-term pullbacks before its next leg up. This suggests that while the long-term outlook is positive, traders should prepare for some volatility in the coming days.

Hence, XRP price could continue its rally to potentially retest or reclaim its March 17 high of $1.60. On the contrary, if the price drops back below $1.40, it could indicate a false breakout and lead to a retest of lower support levels near $1.30.