## Russia's Central Bank Opens Crypto Trading to Retail Investors

Russia's central bank has proposed its first framework for letting ordinary investors trade crypto on public markets. The Bank of Russia published a draft directive on Aug. 11 that would allow non-qualified investors to buy digital assets through brokers, crypto exchanges, or managers—within a strict annual ceiling.

"We're setting a limit on the purchase of cryptocurrencies for non-qualified investors," the central bank said in a separate notice. "Through each intermediary—a broker, crypto exchanger, or manager—they will be able to acquire such assets in the amount of 300 thousand rubles per year."

### Which Coins, and Why Only Three

The draft names exactly three tokens cleared for public exchange trading: **Bitcoin**, **Ethereum**, and **Tether's USDT**. The central bank tied the short list to a law signed this month. "The list of digital currencies that the trading organizer is entitled to admit for public circulation on organized trading platforms (hereinafter referred to as the 'List'): Bitcoin (Bitcoin), Ethereum (Ethereum), Tether USDT (Tether USDT)." the notice reads.

The filter is **liquidity and track record**. Under the new federal law on digital currencies, a coin's market cap, average daily volume, and at least five years of pricing history on foreign platforms decide if it qualifies. "To protect non-qualified investors from sharp and unpredictable fluctuations in cryptocurrency rates, only the most liquid of them will be available to them," the bank said.

The cap itself is written into the directive's operative text. "The maximum amount of the total value of digital currencies acquired through a broker during the calendar year amounts to 300 thousand rubles," Article 2 states.

**XRP**, the cryptocurrency created by the founders of payments company Ripple in 2012, has been left off the approved list for now. The token would seemingly qualify given the criteria, but XRP over the years has gone through regulatory troubles—stemming from a since-settled SEC lawsuit against Ripple—that caused the token to be delisted and then relisted on several exchanges, which could be playing a factor.

### Retail Gets a Door; Whales Get the Market

Qualified investors—Russia's wealthier, accredited class—face none of these walls. "Qualified investors will be able to acquire all cryptocurrencies that will be traded on the exchange and over-the-counter markets, without restrictions," the notice says. Before any trade, though, everyone takes a test. "All investors, regardless of their status, will need to pass testing and familiarize themselves with the risks of investing in cryptoassets."

The move follows the central bank's earlier steps to open crypto to wealthy investors, and lands as Tether's role draws scrutiny—the stablecoin issuer has frozen millions in USDT tied to sanctioned Russian exchanges.

The Bank of Russia accepts comments until Aug. 24, and the directive takes effect 10 days after its official publication, signed by Governor Elvira Nabiullina.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether clear the central bank's liquidity bar—everything else, including XRP, stays off-limits for retail.

Russia Greenlights Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT for Retail Trading—But XRP Misses the Cut

Bitcoin slipped to near $64,000 on Tuesday, down over 1% on the day but still up marginally on the week, after a fourth failed attempt to hold above $65,000. It reached a 24-hour high just above $65,300 before sliding through the Asian afternoon.

Ether was the weakest major, down over 2% to $1,878, though it remains slightly higher over seven days. XRP fell almost 2% to $1.01 and is down almost 6% on the week, the worst of the group by some distance. Solana eased under 1% to $76 but leads the week at 3%. BNB slipped to $600 and holds a 2% weekly gain.

Three majors went the other way. Hyperliquid's HYPE rose almost 2% to $55, tron gained slightly to 33 cents and dogecoin was marginally higher at 7 cents.

Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said bitcoin has been testing $65,000 for four straight days without any surge in buying as it approaches the round number.

More telling is the absence of selling into it, which he read as "a build-up of short positions well above this level" rather than holders taking profit.

That makes $70,000 the next area to watch, another round number with the 200-day moving average sitting nearby. Clearing it would put bitcoin above the range where buyers and sellers fought through March and April, a move Kuptsikevich said would shift sentiment meaningfully.

Traders are not there yet. The crypto sentiment index sits at 30, in what is known as the fear zone, and has stayed there since mid-July with occasional dips toward extreme fear.

Bonds and oil set the tone in broader markets. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields rose six basis points on Monday to 4.71%, dragging Australian and New Zealand government bonds down with them, with no cash Treasury trading during Asian hours because of a public holiday in Japan.

Brent crude held at $87.73 a barrel after jumping 5% on Monday, when President Donald Trump made fresh demands on Iran and dimmed hopes of a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Gold rose for a third session above $4,400 an ounce.

Higher oil feeds into the inflation figures due Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET, which is why the rally is weighing on assets that do better when rate rises look less likely.

Fund flows had been running the other way until this week. U.S. spot bitcoin funds took in $865 million across five sessions through Aug. 7, before a provisional outflow of $91 million on Monday.

Bitcoin failed to hold $65,000 for a fourth day as an oil rally revived inflation worries before Wednesday's U.S. price data.

XRP and Ether Lead Crypto Losses as Bitcoin Struggles to Hold $65K, Analysts Eye $70K

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink with a price target of $200 by the end of 2030, implying a roughly 25-fold gain from around $8 today and outperformance of both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the period.

Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, laid out staged targets in a note published Monday: $13 by the end of this year, then $41, $82 and $133 before reaching $200. The same note pencils in Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by end-2030.

Kendrick expects the value of tokenized assets on-chain to climb roughly 12-fold to $4 trillion by end-2028 from about $340 billion now, and assets deployed in DeFi to grow 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030. Because Chainlink charges for delivering data and moving assets between chains, the bank estimates its fees should rise about 25 times over that period, and assumes the token price follows fees.

Chainlink's incumbency is the other half of the argument. The note puts its total value secured above $110 billion, covering roughly 70% of oracle-dependent value in DeFi globally and more than 80% on Ethereum. Aave V3 alone accounts for 44% of that secured value.

## Wall Street on the client list

Kendrick named Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JP Morgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity and S&P Global among institutions using Chainlink services, and expects off-chain customers to become a growing share of fees. Tokenized funds and bonds need net asset values, rates and reserve attestations, making them more data-hungry than crypto-native assets.

On interoperability, Chainlink still trails LayerZero. The note says more than $7 billion in token value has moved from legacy bridges to Chainlink's CCIP since a $292 million exploit in April, with quarterly CCIP volume reaching $4.9 billion in the second quarter, up 353% year on year. Decrypt reported in May that KelpDAO blamed LayerZero for that exploit and planned to rebuild on Chainlink, a characterization LayerZero disputes.

The note is the latest in a run of DeFi initiations from Kendrick, all built on the same 37-fold forecast. He set targets of $100 for Uniswap and $3,500 for Aave in June, and $60 for Morpho in July. UNI jumped double digits after its note landed. Chainlink’s response has been more muted, with LINK currently trading at $8.25, down 0.8% on the day, per CoinGecko data.

Risks flagged in the note include institutional tokenization scaling more slowly than expected, pilots failing to become recurring production workflows, specialist providers taking share, and technical failures denting confidence.

The bank has now set 2030 targets for Uniswap, Aave, Morpho and Chainlink, all resting on one 37x forecast for DeFi growth.

Standard Chartered Predicts Chainlink to Soar to $200 by 2030, Fueled by $4T Tokenization

It was a quiet, red-tinged day across crypto, and XRP spent it near the bottom of the pile. While the market as a whole has been in a flat, choppy state for the last several weeks, it’s XRP—the cryptocurrency created by the founders of payments company Ripple—that continues to underperform: rising less when others are gaining, and falling harder when others drop.

The reason could be the market's current lack of clarity—or, rather, the delay of the long-awaited **Digital Assets Market Clarity Act**. The Clarity Act, which if passed would create the first formal legal framework for crypto assets in the United States, matters more for XRP than it does more established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The legislation would formally classify XRP as a digital commodity, stripping the regulatory ambiguity that has weighed on institutional demand for years. Traders price that in faster than lawmakers move.

The Senate was unable to vote on the bill before the August recess, dashing what little hope remained that the legislation would be passed this year. However, Majority Leader John Thune did file cloture on the bill late last week, before lawmakers headed out, locking in a procedural vote for September 15. The bill still needs 60 votes to clear the filibuster, and with Democrats holding out, analysts call its 2026 odds a long shot. That's a different picture from late July, when reports that President Donald Trump would accept the bill's stalled ethics provision sent Polymarket odds of passage from 32% to 43% and sparked a broad rally.

The numbers in the crypto charts today show the cool-down. In the top 10 by market cap, XRP was the worst seven-day performer at -4.96%, while Solana gained 3.64% and Bitcoin rose 1.17% over the same stretch. XRP also slipped 1.24% on the day, against a market that was mostly flat. The token is acting like the Clarity trade is being unwound.

## XRP price: What the charts say

XRP is trading at $1.0282, at around a $64 billion market cap, down 0.17% on the day and the weakest of the top 10 over the past week, pinned just above the $1.0128 swing low in a market that still carries a **death cross**—a bearish signal that traders pay close attention to.

![XRP price data. Image: Tradingview](https://img.decrypt.co/insecure/rs:fit:3840:0:0:0/plain/https://cdn.decrypt.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/XRPUSDT_2026-08-10_11-54-31.png@webp)

The trajectory is the story. On the daily chart, XRP has logged lower highs and lower lows for weeks, bleeding from the late-June area near $1.3, down to where it sits now. The July 21 Clarity pop that briefly tagged $1.15 failed and rolled straight back over. That bounce now looks exactly like what bull traps are supposed to look like, not a trend change. Price isn't building a base; it's drifting just above the $1.0128 floor, and a market this trendless can compress longer than most traders expect.

The average price of the last 50 days (EMA50) still sits below the 200-day average (EMA200), in the formation traders call a death cross. Exponential moving averages smooth out average price over a set period; when the shorter-term average trades under the longer-term one, it tells you the medium-term trajectory remains down. Bulls need a daily close back above the EMA cloud to change that reading structurally, and they don't have it. To achieve this, XRP would need to spike at least more than 8%.

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, reads 38.2. RSI is a momentum gauge on a 0–100 scale: above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold. At 38.2, XRP is below the neutral 50 line and leaning bearish, but not yet in the oversold zone that tends to attract bargain hunters.

The Squeeze Momentum Indicator is off, which means there is still some structure in the bearish trend. With the squeeze inactive and momentum negative, there's no volatility coil loading to fire XRP upward. That's not the signature of a squeeze about to fire upward.

The Average Directional Index, or ADX, sits at 14.6. ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction; readings under 20 mark a directionless, choppy tape where false breakouts and stop hunts are common. At 14.6 the trend has no real conviction behind it—though the directional indicators tilt bearish (DI- sits above DI+), which lines up with the death cross rather than fighting it.

The bull case: a daily close back above the Fibonacci resistance at $1.0486 is the first proof buyers are showing up, opening a run at the EMA cloud and then the golden zone at $1.0887–$1.1066. That requires the Clarity Act story to reaccelerate, not just linger.

The bear case: XRP loses the $1.0128 swing low and the round $1.00 figure gives way, which opens a measured move toward the lower-$0.90s. The death cross and the negative Squeeze momentum both point the same way. For now, the path of least resistance does not appear to be up.

The bull case exists, but it's thin. XRP is a Clarity Act proxy trading like the bill's odds just fell to 21%, and the chart underneath agrees.

*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.*

XRP is trading just above $1.00, still pinned under a death cross, as the legislative tailwind that lifted it in July loses steam.

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