[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong] XRP is rebounding on a surge in on-chain transactions, reviving expectations it could return to $2.

On Oct. 19 (local time), blockchain outlet U.Today reported that market attention is shifting from bitcoin's direction to destinations for inflows such as XRP, BNB and expanding institutional tokenisation.

Bitcoin traded around $82,341.96 that morning and posted a 60.24 percent market share. The outlet's main point was that while selling pressure in U.S. AI and semiconductor stocks intensified, the crypto market showed a separate trend. The U.S. September consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier, and the producer price index (PPI) increased 1.3 percent from the prior month. Markets see these inflation readings as lifting expectations for tighter Federal Reserve policy.

In that environment, XRP recovered to as high as $1.3068. Daily on-chain transfer volume on the XRP Ledger surged to $49.66 billion. Ali Charts, citing Santiment data, pointed to a large liquidity shift as the price slid to $1.26 and said large buy orders absorbed most of the selling. It also cited a low $5.75 million in futures liquidations as evidence the rebound was spot-driven.

Supply and demand signals for XRP are mixed. Exchange holdings rose to 11.81 billion XRP, leaving the possibility of selling pressure. In the options market, call open interest was tallied at about double put open interest. Markets are also looking at a technical scenario in which a move above $1.56 could accelerate into the $1.8 to $2 range.

On fundamentals, attention turned to Ripple Prime's link to a DTCC tokenisation project. The connection to infrastructure with $114 trillion in assets under custody was cited as a factor for XRP. RWA.xyz data showed XRPL real-world assets at $4.47 billion, with distributed RWA value tallied at $496.62 million. Over the past 30 days, RWA transfer volume rose 1,458 percent to $7.03 billion, and stablecoin transfer volume was $6.27 billion.

A further variable for XRP this week is a network upgrade scheduled for Oct. 23. The bug fix was presented as a step toward launching an interbank cross-border lending protocol. Ripple still needs 10 more approvals from among 29 validators for an official start. Standard Chartered maintained its 2030 XRP target of $28.

Expanding tokenisation of institutional money is another pillar of the market. BlackRock defined tokenised funds as core infrastructure for the financial system, and its BUIDL fund manages $2.22 billion of distributed value across Ethereum, Avalanche and Arbitrum. The assets are also being used as margin collateral at crypto exchanges. JP Morgan also launched JPM Coin on public Ethereum, and $844 million is locked in the money market fund MONY and JLTXX.

Cumulative transaction value on JP Morgan's Kinexys blockchain platform has exceeded $4 trillion, with daily transaction volume tallied at $7 billion. Vitalik Buterin is pushing the EIP-8288 standard, which shifts heavy computation to the client side to reduce network congestion.

Inside the market, a reallocation of funds is also under way. Strategy said it bought an additional 267 BTC at an average price of $82,900 as of Oct. 18, raising total holdings to 848,517 BTC. The company repurchased $193 million of STRC and expanded the cap on its digital credit securities redemption program to $3 billion from $2 billion. Miner MARA, by contrast, has moved 1,000 BTC to exchanges over the past 5 days to fund costs for expanding AI infrastructure.

The BNB ecosystem also offered a supply-reduction catalyst. BNB Smart Chain burned 1,646,196 BNB, valued at $1.197 billion. Across the broader altcoin market, projects without revenue models continued restructuring. Blast, Pudgy Penguins' Abstract, and Blur halted operations.

This week's macro calendar is another factor that could steer near-term direction. Meta and Tesla earnings are scheduled for Oct. 21, and U.S. jobless claims and the Federal Reserve balance sheet will be released on Oct. 22. On Oct. 23, preliminary U.S. October manufacturing, services and composite purchasing managers' indexes are due. Markets see a base-case scenario in which bitcoin moves sideways in the $82,000 to $84,000 range in the short term, while also leaving room to retest an upper level of $87,000 if AI stocks stabilise and big tech earnings improve.