Ripple’s Third Korean Bank Partnership for 2026 Fails to Lift XRP: Price Drops Below $1

As Ripple’s institutional expansion in Korea continues, XRP has fallen below $1; the Jeonbuk Bank deal has once again highlighted the decoupling between the company’s RLUSD-focused business model and the token’s performance.

XRP lost more than 1% on Tuesday, sliding below the $1 level and pushing its weekly loss to over 2%. Consequently, XRP became the weakest asset among major cryptocurrencies in terms of daily and weekly performance.

This decline occurred on the same day Ripple announced its third partnership in South Korea for 2026. Jeonbuk Bank will become the first regional bank in the country to utilize Ripple Payments. Having previously signed agreements with Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank regarding custody and wallet infrastructure, Ripple aims to help businesses execute cross-border payments faster with this new service.

Ripple’s Korean Partnerships Failed to Support XRP Price

Ripple Payments promises to settle international transfers—which can take days in traditional banking systems—within seconds or minutes and operate around the clock. However, the Jeonbuk Bank agreement did not disclose which crypto asset would be used for the transfers.

Over the past year, Ripple has prioritized its dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, for institutional transactions. This preference suggests that agreements with banks and financial institutions may not directly generate demand for XRP. While XRP was trading above $3 last year, it retreated to the $1 level in August.

The total value of real-world assets tokenized on the XRP Ledger stands at approximately $1.38 billion. Of this, $845 million consists of RLUSD. This amount reveals that more than three-fifths of the tokenized assets on the network are RLUSD-linked.

Expectations for a recovery persist on the market side. The $2.78 billion open interest in XRP futures shows that long positions on Binance and OKX are more than three times higher than short positions.