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XRP Is Down 54% in 6 Months. Has It Become a Bargain Buy? | The Motley Fool

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XRP Is Down 54% in 6 Months. Has It Become a Bargain Buy? | The Motley Fool

After spending much of 2025 as one of the hottest cryptocurrencies, XRP (XRP 0.74%) has gone through a rough correction. It’s down 54% over the last six months (as of March 10), and a sell-off has quickly followed every recent uptick.

Sometimes, these drawdowns are an opportunity to buy the dip, but they can also be a falling knife. Let’s see whether there’s a good case to buy XRP at the current price.

Image source: Getty Images.

This drawdown isn’t just an XRP issue

Both the crypto and stock markets are experiencing volatility. Most major cryptocurrencies have also performed poorly over the last six months, with Bitcoin losing 39%, Ethereum declining 54%, and Dogecoin dropping 63%. Stocks have also fluctuated, with investors rotating out of tech into value stocks.

XRP’s drop isn’t due to any significant failures on its part. The downturn has hit the entire crypto market. That said, while most cryptocurrencies suffer during downturns, not all recover when the market rebounds, so it’s not a given that XRP will succeed going forward.

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Why XRP could continue to struggle

XRP’s real-world value is based on its role in Ripple Payments, a payment network for financial institutions. Ripple Payments uses blockchain technology to send cross-border payments quickly and with low transaction fees. Banks that partner with Ripple can also use XRP as a bridge currency, converting payments from the sender’s currency to XRP and then to the recipient’s currency.

XRP Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.74%) $-0.01

Current Price

$1.39

It’s an interesting idea, but since XRP’s launch way back in 2012, several problems have emerged. Financial institutions can and often do use Ripple Payments without XRP. Of the 300-plus institutions using Ripple Payments, only a handful also use XRP. Even when cross-border payments involve XRP, it serves a brief role. The XRP tokens are converted to the destination currency in seconds.

Ripple also launched its own stablecoin, Ripple USD, last year, and it currently has a market cap of $1.6 billion. Although it’s possible that XRP and Ripple USD can coexist, Ripple USD theoretically works even better as a bridge currency, since it doesn’t have XRP’s volatility.

The Clarity Act is a potential growth catalyst

It’s not all bad news for XRP. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is considering the Clarity Act, which would provide a regulatory framework for digital assets. Notably, it would classify XRP as a digital commodity and not a security. U.S. banks and asset managers would effectively have the green light to fully integrate XRP into operations, including using it as a bridge currency in international payments.

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Even if the Clarity Act passes, there’s no guarantee XRP’s price will increase. Last August, issuer Ripple finally ended its lawsuit with the SEC, but closing that book didn’t provide any positive momentum for XRP.

If you’re bullish on XRP, now is a good time to add to your position. However, given the risk involved, you should avoid making it a significant position in your portfolio. Consider investing in other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as cryptocurrency stocks. That way, you can still benefit from a market recovery, even if XRP underperforms.

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Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


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Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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