.png){kind=logo}
XRP fell to 98 cents in Asian morning trading Tuesday, slipping below the widely watched $1 level and reaching its lowest price since November 2024. Ripple announced Jeonbuk Bank as its third Korean partnership of 2026 as the token weakened.
Jeonbuk Bank will deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border transfers, becoming the first regional bank in South Korea to use the service. The bank will target business customers, including importers, exporters, IT startups, and online content creators.
Ripple said the service supports near real-time stablecoin settlement and can operate around the clock. It did not identify the asset that will move funds through the Jeonbuk deployment.
The agreement follows Ripple's earlier Korean deals with Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank for custody and wallet infrastructure. Jeonbuk Bank, founded in 1969, is the dominant lender in its home province. Can Ripple's growing institutional reach translate into renewed demand for XRP?
Ripple has spent the past year promoting RLUSD, its dollar-pegged token, as a settlement asset for institutional activity. Still, Ripple did not confirm whether Jeonbuk Bank will use RLUSD. That distinction comes as Ripple's institutional partnerships have expanded while XRP has weakened. The token traded above $3 at last year's highs before falling through $1 during August.
Meanwhile, tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger total about $1.38 billion. RLUSD accounts for roughly $845 million, representing more than three fifths of all issued assets there.
Ripple Payments also offers a different route from traditional bank transfers. Those transfers can pass through intermediary banks over SWIFT and may take days, while Ripple says its service settles within seconds to minutes.
Despite the spot-price decline, XRP futures open interest stood near $2.78 billion this week. On Binance, more than three accounts held long positions for every short account, with OKX showing a similar ratio.
At the same time, social commentary around XRP reached its most negative level in three months. Derivatives positioning continued to rebuild as aggressive selling remained dominant. CryptoQuant contributor Amr Taha reported Coinbase's seven-day net wallet count at minus 14,300 on Aug. 17. Binance and Crypto.com also recorded more withdrawing wallets than depositing wallets.
However, wallet counts do not measure the amount of XRP moving between venues. One large deposit can outweigh many small withdrawals, so the figure cannot directly measure net token flows. Coinbase represented 47.3% of the absolute wallet imbalance across the exchanges tracked by the analyst. That concentration does not show whether withdrawn XRP moved into self-custody or another trading venue.
Also Read: XRP vs Stablecoins: Can Ripple’s Token Compete in Global Payments?
Separately, Binance XRP open interest rose about 28.6% from Aug. 3 through Aug. 17. Open interest tracks outstanding derivatives positions and does not show whether traders are net long or short.
Rising leverage can increase liquidation size when prices leave a tight range. Funding rates, cumulative volume delta, and long-to-short ratios remain important for assessing the direction of derivatives positioning.
XRP fell below $1 as Ripple added another Korean banking partner and expanded its institutional footprint. At the same time, RLUSD dominates tokenized assets on the XRP Ledger, while derivatives leverage continues to build. Wallet-count data also shows more withdrawals, though it does not measure net token flows.
