Analyst EGRAG says only a weekly close above a certain level would flip XRP’s long-running descending channel bullish.

XRP is attempting to push above the 200 EMA and the $1.55 level, a move that market analyst EGRAG CRYPTO says would signal short-term strength if confirmed with a weekly close.

Despite the attempted rally, the token remains trapped inside a descending channel that has defined its price action for months, leaving the broader trend corrective until a breakout above $2.20 flips the structure bullish.

XRP Tests 200 EMA

In a post published on X on March 4, EGRAG CRYPTO said XRP is “pushing above 200 EMA” but warned that the price is still trading inside a descending channel on the weekly timeframe.

According to their breakdown, a weekly close above $1.55 would weaken the current downward trajectory, while a close above $2.20 would invalidate the bearish structure and open the path toward $2.70 to $3.60.

If XRP fails to reclaim $1.55, the analyst outlined a move toward $1.26, with a possible sweep of macro support between $0.95 and $0.85. In a separate post, they assigned a 55% to 65% probability to a deeper sweep and a 35% to 45% chance of an early breakout reclaim.

“Structure > Emotion,” they wrote, arguing that the descending channel still defines the trend. The technical standoff comes at a time when derivatives and spot activity are contracting. Analyst Amr Taha previously noted that XRP futures open interest had dropped 70% since October 2025, falling to $203 million.

Binance open interest slipped below $270 million, levels last seen in April 2025 before a major rally. Historically, such resets have coincided with local bottoms as leverage is cleared out, though they do not guarantee a rebound.

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Price Action Reflects Fragile Recovery

At the time of writing, data from CoinGecko showed that XRP had gained about 4% in the last 24 hours and roughly 3% over the past week, bouncing from a recent low near $1.27.

Even so, the token remains down more than 12% over 30 days and about 40% across the past year. Furthermore, it is still more than 61% below its July 2025 all-time high of $3.65.

The recent rebound has occurred within a 24-hour range between $1.34 and $1.42, with market capitalization holding near $86 billion.

For now, the weekly close relative to $1.55 is the immediate focus. A decisive break above $2.20 would alter the chart structure described by EGRAG, while rejection below the 200 EMA will keep the descending channel intact and leave lower supports in play.

SKY, the native token of DeFi platform Sky (formerly Maker), climbed nearly 10% after the protocol executed a governance proposal that slowed how quickly new tokens are created through staking rewards, expanded its lending system around the USDS stablecoin, and kept up a large buyback program that is pulling tokens out of the market.

The governance proposal, which passed Feb. 27 and was executed March 2, introduced several changes across the Sky Protocol, including adjustments to staking rewards and the onboarding of new credit infrastructure designed to expand the reach of its USDS stablecoin ecosystem.

One of the most closely watched changes involved staking rewards – the rate at which new coins are issued as a return for locking up existing holdings in the protocol.

Slower supply growth

The proposal “normalized” the so-called SKY staking emissions by setting the distribution at roughly 838.18 million tokens over the next 180 days, representing a reduction of about 161.82 million tokens compared with the previous schedule. Lower emissions can reduce dilution pressure, a factor traders often watch closely when evaluating governance tokens.

At the same time, the protocol has been steadily repurchasing its own token through an automated buyback program funded with USDS. According to Sky’s dashboard, the system has spent roughly $114.5 Million buying back about 1.83 billion SKY tokens so far.

The purchases occur in small transactions throughout the day, typically around $10,000 per trade, creating a steady bid in the market. In total, the program is currently removing roughly 3.6 million SKY tokens from circulation each day.

Combined with the emissions adjustment, the buybacks have tightened the token’s effective supply. Data from the protocol indicates that roughly 67% of SKY is currently staked, leaving a smaller portion actively trading in the market.

The governance proposal also approved new infrastructure to expand credit markets around the protocol. Two new “Launch Agents” were onboarded to help deploy credit and manage liquidity infrastructure connected to the USDS stablecoin system.

Industry trend

Across the crypto market, a growing number of protocols are shifting toward token models built around buybacks and lower emissions, replacing the inflation-heavy incentive systems that dominated early DeFi.

In the past, many protocols distributed large amounts of newly minted tokens to attract liquidity providers, traders, and governance participants. While those incentives helped bootstrap networks, they also created persistent selling pressure as recipients often sold rewards into the market.

More recently, protocols have begun moving in the opposite direction. Rather than issuing more tokens, some are using protocol revenue to repurchase tokens on the open market or reduce emissions altogether.

Hyperliquid offers a recent example. The decentralized exchange allocates a portion of trading fees to buy and burn its HYPE token. When trading activity surged last week, the protocol generated more than $13 Million in weekly fees, allowing roughly $9 Million worth of tokens to be burned over seven days.

Other projects are pursuing similar approaches. Solana-based Jupiter voted in February to eliminate net new emissions for its JUP token in 2026, preventing additional supply from entering circulation. Meanwhile, derivatives protocol dYdX approved a plan allocating 75% of protocol revenue toward token buybacks.

The shift reflects a broader effort to tie token demand more directly to protocol activity while limiting dilution for existing holders.

Crypto venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is doubling down on crypto despite a major market downturn, seeking $2 billion for a new crypto fund.

A16z Crypto, the blockchain arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is raising a fifth fund focused on crypto with plans to close by mid-2026, according to Fortune, citing anonymous sources on Wednesday.

The latest round is significantly smaller than its previous $4.5 billion fund from 2022, but the company has shifted to a shorter fundraising cycle to remain flexible to ever-changing crypto narratives. 

The move comes amid a crypto bear market that has seen more than $2 trillion wiped from total market capitalization since its peak of around $4.4 trillion in early October.

A16z crypto chief Chris Dixon’s Web3 philosophy envisioned a decentralized internet with applications built on blockchains, according to his 2024 book, “Read Write Own.”

But many of those investments have not panned out, notably decentralized X (Twitter) competitor Farcaster, which returned $180 million to investors after selling off its infrastructure in January. 

Crypto VCs exploring non-crypto tech

Wall Street crypto buffs have narrowed their focus lately toward stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization, and financial products, with many venture capitalists following that shift. Others have started to look towards other areas of technology.

Co-founder of venture firm Multicoin Capital, Kyle Samani, stepped down in February to “explore new areas of technology,” such as AI, longevity, and robotics. 

Meanwhile, crypto venture firm Paradigm is expanding into artificial intelligence and robotics with its latest fund seeking to raise $1.5 billion, as reported in late February. 

Related: Crypto slides, but tokenized RWAs and VC push ahead

A16z raised over $15 billion in January to invest in companies and technologies it deemed critical to secure America’s future, mentioning AI and crypto and including technologies in “key areas that generate human flourishing,” such as biology, health, defense, public safety, education, and entertainment.

A16z sees opportunity in AI, crypto in 2026

A16z recently highlighted crypto and AI as major themes for 2026, stating that it expected AI to automate cybersecurity work, AI models to become app stores, privacy to become the “most important moat in crypto,” prediction markets to get “bigger, broader, and smarter,” and stablecoins to become more intertwined with traditional banking and finance. 

According to DeFiLlama’s fundraising aggregator, crypto startups raised $895 million in February, down almost 40% from the $1.47 billion raised the previous month and marginally less than the $1 billion raised in February 2025. 

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