XRP dominates early 2026 headlines as momentum builds, while investors quietly 
eye Remittix as the next breakout token. XRP is suddenly everywhere again to 
start 2026, and it is not just noise. When a coin has price momentum, fund 
flow…

XRP is suddenly everywhere again, but this new rival is tipped as the next big thing

Zcash&#8217;s technical and fundamental catalysts raise the odds of ZEC price 
declining to as low as $200 in the coming weeks after core developers exited 
the project.

Zcash governance in turmoil: How low can ZEC price go?

Saylor&#8217;s meeting with Justice highlights growing political support for digital 
assets, potentially influencing future regulatory frameworks.
The post Michael Saylor meets with Senator Jim Justice to discuss digital 
assets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Michael Saylor meets with Senator Jim Justice to discuss digital assets

The current crypto market downturn is unfolding as traders await Friday&#8217;s non- 
farm payrolls report. Economists expect the upcoming data to show the economy 
added more than 55,000 jobs in December.

Crypto market crash continues ahead of the US NFP report

A longtime XRP Ledger builder says XRPL has a narrow shot in 2026 to jump into 
the top tier of chains on liquidity and activity, but only if Ripple and the 
XRPL Foundation stop “playing it safe” and prioritize frictionless consumer 
onboarding, real-world payment rails, and a faster, more aggressive funding 
engine. Why 2026 Needs To Be The Year For XRP Panos Mekras, founder of Anodos 
Finance, wrote on X that the network’s current metrics are a warning sign: 
“only a few thousand active users,” daily DEX volume “frequently under $10m,” 
and AMM TVL “struggling below $50m” roughly two years after launch. The 
target, he argued, should be explicit: “move into the top 3 networks when it 
comes to volume, liquidity and overall activity.” Mekras said the liquidity 
gap is ultimately an infrastructure and distribution problem. XRPL remains “an 
isolated island,” he wrote, with limited bridges to other chains and 
“fragmented, high-fee gateways” instead of seamless on/offramps. His 
prescription is direct integration of mainstream rails: “native support for 
major rails like VISA and Mastercard directly within XRPL-based applications” 
so users can issue cards and spend XRPL assets in real time. Related Reading: 
Same XRP Setup That Led To Over 1,000% Increase In 2017 Is Playing Out Again 
He also framed stablecoin alignment as a competitive constraint: RLUSD 
reaching a $1 billion market cap in its first year is “positive,” he said, but 
“$1B is not good enough” against incumbents with $5 billion to $180 billion in 
circulation that have already become default onramps. He also argued XRPL lost 
its consumer narrative after Ripple’s 2014 pivot toward payments and B2B. That 
shift, in his telling, trained the market to associate XRP primarily with 
Ripple partnerships rather than the ledger itself, leaving many holders 
unaware of XRPL’s native DEX and token features. He pointed to a 2023 reply 
from Ripple CTO David “JoelKatz” Schwartz, who said the DEX ecosystem was 
strong at the time of the pivot, citing “over $8 million per day in swaps and 
payments” that Ripple “could 100% confirm” as real activity. For 2026, Mekras 
wants XRPL positioned less as “payments” and more as a protocol-layer finance 
stack where core features are built-in rather than stitched together through 
smart contracts, with “aggregated liquidity” and “one DEX to rule them all.” A 
key pillar is “XRPFi,” which he described as an effort to turn “the $100B+ of 
dormant XRP into productive, yield-generating capital” by pushing XRP 
liquidity into programmable environments. He cited Flare’s FXRP via FAssets as 
a route into smart contracts without “central custodians,” and highlighted 
Axelar &amp; Midas’ mXRP as an “institutional-grade liquid staking token” he said 
could enable “5–10% APY,” creating liquid XRP variants that can be used as 
collateral and AMM liquidity. Related Reading: XRP Rally Reopens The $8–$12 
Zone Debate, Says Will Taylor The consumer strategy, he argued, should be 
“invisible infrastructure”: utility apps where users never see crypto 
mechanics. “If a user is ever prompted to ‘Add a Trust Line’ or ‘Have enough 
XRP for the reserves’ we have already failed,” he wrote. “The interface must 
be indistinguishable from the modern mobile apps people already trust.” To 
enable that, he called Sponsored Fees and Reserves (XLS-68) the top technical 
priority so developers can sponsor account reserves and fees, paired with 
Batch Transactions to compress multi-step actions into “one single, atomic 
signature.” Mekras’ sharpest criticism was aimed at grants. He called Ripple’s 
2022 commitment of 1 billion XRP to fund XRPL development a “Ghost Fund,” 
estimating less than $50 million, under 5% has reached active builders in four 
years. “A grant program that takes 3 months to approve $50,000 and can take 
another 3 months to receive the money is not a growth engine, it is a 
bureaucracy,” he wrote, arguing XRPL needs million-dollar checks for proven 
teams, direct liquidity incentives, and a unified developer experience. His 
conclusion was a call for a “war chest mentality” in 2026: fund distribution 
and liquidity, fix onboarding friction, and build consumer products where XRPL 
is simply the backend. Without that, he warned, the ecosystem risks remaining 
a technically capable network that still cannot attract sustained users, 
builders, or capital at scale. At press time, XRP traded at $2.10. Featured 
image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Cryptocurrency price in UAH