XRP and HYPE Update: What I Am Buying and Why

I am buying everything I can. XRP and HYPE are the two coins I keep adding to, and today I want to show you exactly why. I also want to show you the parts that do not fit the bull story, because you deserve both sides before you put a single dollar in. Here is the honest scoreboard, the news that matters, the myths going around, and the price levels I am watching next.

The honest scoreboard right now

I own three cryptos in my portfolio right now. Can you name them? Ethereum, XRP and HYPE. That is it.

XRP is around $1.50. It is up about 12% on the month. But it is down about 18.6% on the year and about 49.7% from where it was a year ago. Its market cap is $94.6 billion, which ranks it number five overall.

HYPE is around $88. It is up 7.6% on the month and up 246.5% on the year. It hit a new all time high just nine days ago. Its market cap is about $19.6 billion.

Remember when XRP hit 99 cents on August 17? I told you that was the low, and it popped. Now people complain about $1.50. That is up 50% in a few weeks. People will always complain. That is okay. We keep moving.

XRP is still about 58% to 61% below its all time high, depending on which site you use. CoinGecko has the record at $3.65 from July 2025. CoinMarketCap has $3.84 from January 2018.

Why I think HYPE could grow a lot from here

Look at the gap. XRP is worth about $94 billion. HYPE is worth about $19 billion. I think HYPE has the potential to reach an $80 billion market cap. That would be almost four times where it is now.

How long would that take? Probably two to three years. It will not happen overnight. But if you get that kind of return over three years, that is a massive success story.

What the XRP chart is telling me

I told you I wanted to see if the 13 and the 50 held for XRP. On my charts, green is the 5 EMA, yellow is the 13 EMA and red is the 50 EMA. XRP came down, bounced off the 13, and the wicks keep wicking up. That is exactly what you want to see.

XRP is now above all four of its major moving averages. That is a good sign. But it is still inside a downtrend that sits about 50% below its 52 week high. Both things are true.

The XRP fund money is in, but it is underwater

Here is a number most people skip. Since launch, investors have put $1.790 billion into the US spot XRP funds. What those funds are worth now is $1.684 billion. That is a gap of about $106 million.

There have been 11 straight weeks of inflows since July 17. About $121 million came in during September alone. So money is not leaving. The gap is from price, not from people pulling out. I am not losing sleep. It is going the right direction. We just need a breakout.

The biggest XRP treasury company just got approved

Shareholders of Armada Acquisition Corp II approved the deal on September 30. The ticker will be XRPN on the Nasdaq. Evernorth will launch holding at least 473,276,430 XRP. That makes it the largest XRP treasury vehicle ever put together.

• 126.8 million XRP comes straight from Ripple.
• 211.3 million comes from the sponsor side of the deal.
• 84.4 million was bought with $214 million of real money.
• The average price paid for that block was about $2.54. With XRP near $1.50, that block is down about 41%.

This is good news and it could be a positive catalyst. But I want to be fair. The flagship XRP treasury company is already down about 41% on its purchase before the ticker even trades.

The SEC named XRP in its own document

This is the strongest legal fact out there, and almost nobody cites it right. In its Interpretive Release 33 11412, effective March 23, 2026, the SEC wrote that examples of digital commodities include Aptos, Avalanche, Bitcoin and XRP.

The lawsuit has also been over since August 22, 2025. The Second Circuit dismissed both appeals. That was more than a year ago. If anyone ever tries to go after XRP again, that document is something to point back to.

Ripple released a billion XRP and the price went up

Ripple released 1 billion XRP on October 1 in four transactions: 400 million, 200 million, 300 million and 100 million. That sounds scary. It is not.

Historically, Ripple puts 700 million to 800 million of every release right back into escrow. The real monthly release is closer to 200 million to 300 million. There is still 31.8 billion XRP in escrow. That is 31.9% of all XRP that exists.

How many XRP exist? About 99,985,604,915. There are not 100 billion. About 14.4 million have been burned since the start. What gets called circulating is about 63.1 billion. And the price went up through the unlock. The same thing happened in September.

There is no XRP short squeeze right now

I have to correct something. A lot of people want a short squeeze. The data says it is not there.

• Funding is neutral on most big exchanges.
• About 70% of top traders on Binance are long, not short.
• About 80% of the last 24 hours of liquidations were longs.
• Binance XRP open interest is down 15.3% from its September 22 high.
• CME leveraged funds are net short about 80 million XRP, but they have been net short for twelve weeks while XRP went from 99 cents to $1.57. That looks like a cash and carry trade, not a bet against XRP.

We did have a nice squeeze off the 99 cent low. That is over. Now we wait to see if things reset or if we get a good old fashioned bull stampede.

About ten months ago, people asked me when this cycle would be over. Based on prior cycles, I said not until October or November. Here we are in October. If it follows those prior cycles, this is when it can explode higher out of nowhere. That is what I am watching for.

Why I am buying HYPE: it is a real business

Hyperliquid collects more in fees than three big chains combined. On an annualized basis, Hyperliquid pulls in about $869 million. Solana is at $307 million, Ethereum at $199 million and Base at $57 million. Add those three up and you get about $562 million.

This is why I am buying it. It is not a meme play. It works like a company, and the utility is fantastic.

The Assistance Fund buys HYPE every day with protocol revenue. It paid about $1.33 billion, and what it holds is now worth about $4.21 billion. That is up about $2.9 billion. Its average cost is $27.96 per HYPE. It buys about $1.74 million a day and holds 47.6 million HYPE.

A third of Hyperliquid is not crypto anymore

This is the part almost nobody covers. There are 297 markets built by outside teams across ten separate exchanges on Hyperliquid. Each builder stakes 500,000 HYPE to launch one.

These builder markets now handle about 32% of daily volume. That is $2.7 billion out of $8.5 billion in 24 hours. The S&P 500 market alone has $364 million in open interest and did $348 million of volume in one day.

People trade gold, silver, Brent crude, the S&P 500, Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, the euro and the yen on there. There is also pre IPO exposure you cannot get anywhere else on chain, like SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic.

The US needs to let this in. I think that could happen sometime in 2027. If it does, wow.

The $860 million HYPE unlock on Monday

On October 6, about 9.92 million HYPE become claimable. That is around $860 million at current prices, and it goes to core contributors.

Here is the headline most people miss. Only about 8% of the September unlock was claimed. That is about one in twelve. Unlocked is not the same as claimed. Claimed is not the same as sold. I treat the $860 million as a ceiling on what could hit the market, not a sell order.

The honest bear case on HYPE

I share both sides. Everything below is true and none of it fits the bull story.

• Hyperliquid has about 23% of all 24 hour perpetuals volume. People still quote 60% to 70%, but that was 2025.
• Pump.fun outearned Hyperliquid on seven day revenue, $17.4 million versus $10.5 million.
• Value locked on HyperEVM is down 14% since September 18.
• Protocol fees have been stuck between $55 million and $81 million a month for eight straight months.
• The three spot HYPE funds hold about $502 million, but inflows peaked September 4.
• About 44% of all staked HYPE sits on four Hyper Foundation validators. That is a real centralization number.

Myths to check before you repeat them

• Congress is not about to pass crypto market structure. The CLARITY Act cloture vote failed 49 to 50 on September 15. It needed 60.
• Hyperliquid did not burn 47 million HYPE. It bought them and holds them. The actual burn since launch is about 1.1 million.
• XRP at $1,000 would be a $63 trillion market cap. That is about 22 times the entire crypto market. It is not happening.

The XRP levels and dates I am watching

• $1.57: the 90 day high from September 23. That is the first real resistance. Break it and we can run.
• $1.45: the 20 day moving average. Price is about 3% above it. This is the first thing I watch on a pullback.
• $1.28: the 200 day moving average. Lose that and the bears are back in charge.
• October 6: the HYPE unlock. Watch the claim rate, not the headline.
• October 9: the fixBatchV1_2 amendment activates on the XRP Ledger with 94.3% validator support.
• October 20: the SEC comment period closes on its crypto asset rulemaking.
• October 27 and 28: Ripple Swell in New York and a Fed meeting at the same time.

What I am doing with my money

On XRP, I am buying as much as I can at the times that make the most sense. The SEC named it a digital commodity, and it is still down for the year. That gap is the trade. What I am not doing is waiting on a squeeze the data says is not there.

On HYPE, I am watching the business, not just the token. I like it and I want to be part of it. I am sizing around Monday’s unlock, not guessing at it. I would rather start small into a known event and add later.

And yes, Ethereum is the third one. Those are the three I am watching.

To be clear, none of this is a promise that either coin goes up. XRP is down about 50% in a year, and HYPE is about 10% off an all time high it set nine days ago. Both facts are on the table.

Keep reading on Stock Moe

• Best DeFi Tokens to Buy Now: 4 Cryptos Under $3 Billion
• XRP Short Squeeze Reset: Who Is Short and What I Am Watching
• XRP Price Prediction: The $28 Target and the Real Odds

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Sources

• CoinGecko, Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini spot prices, and the Hyperliquid API, October 2, 2026
• SoSoValue US spot XRP fund flow data through September 29, 2026
• Armada Acquisition Corp II and Evernorth shareholder approval, reported September 30, 2026
• SEC Interpretive Release 33 11412
• XRP Ledger escrow and supply data, October 2, 2026
• Exchange funding data and the CFTC Commitments of Traders report
• Hyperliquid API and Assistance Fund address, October 2, 2026
• DefiLlama fees, volume and value locked data
• Hyperliquid validator data and HYPE fund flow reporting

I am not a financial advisor and nothing in this article is financial advice. Everything here is my own opinion, for educational and entertainment purposes only. Do your own research and talk to a licensed professional before you make any financial decision.