• Analyst Ali Martinez set a $1.54 hourly-close breakout trigger for XRP on September 30.

• Martinez projects XRP rallying roughly 10% into the $1.70 zone after a confirmed breakout.

• Cardano futures open interest fell 9% in a week, from $1.99 billion to $1.81 billion.

Analyst Ali Martinez has put a numbered map on XRP (XRP), and it opens with a single level: $1.54. In a technical note published on September 30, Martinez argues that the token is developing a symmetric triangle on its hourly chart, a consolidation pattern in which overlapping highs and lows tighten toward an apex and usually resolve with a sharp directional move. Such a triangle carries no built-in direction, which is why the confirmation close matters: the structure itself only says a move is coming, not which way. The trigger, in his reading, is the hourly close rather than an intraday spike, because a close filters out wicks that reverse inside the candle. If XRP secures an hourly close above $1.54, he says the upward breakout would be confirmed, and he projects a follow-through move of roughly 10% that carries the XRP price into the $1.70 zone. As of publication that close has not printed, so the setup stays conditional. It does not arrive in a vacuum: the token recently bounced from $1.47 support after a 9.7% slide from its weekly high, and it still holds a 48% gain for the third quarter, its best Q3 in four years. Selling pressure has been measurable as well, with the XRP scarcity index on Binance sliding to -0.94, its lowest since January 2025. For readers following the asset's arc, our latest XRP coverage tracks it week to week, and our guide to the XRP Ledger explains how the network settles value. Traders logging the setup have three markers: the trigger at $1.54, the confirmation mechanism, an hourly close rather than a wick, and the measured target near $1.70.

The Cardano Counterweight

The same note is markedly more defensive on the second asset it covers. Cardano (ADA), the proof-of-stake altcoin Martinez pairs with XRP in the analysis, is presented as carrying unfinished correction risk. Open interest in ADA futures, the dollar value of leveraged positions still open, fell 9% over the past week, from $1.99 billion to $1.81 billion. Martinez reads that decline as traders cutting leveraged exposure rather than adding to it, the posture typically visible in funding rate and open-interest data before it appears in price. Whale flows point the same direction: on-chain data cited in the note records roughly 90 million ADA sold since September 20, tokens worth about $22.5 million at the time. Technical indicators add a third leg. A Tom DeMark Sequential sell signal formed on the daily chart on September 26, and the price has dropped about 10% since. Under the parallel channel Martinez maps on that daily chart, $0.24 is the midline support; a break below it opens a further decline toward the lower channel bound near $0.21. He attaches conditional upside as well: if the $0.21 support holds, the region could form a fresh bull signal, with the upper channel bound near $0.28 as the next target. The split is the point of the note. One asset gets a breakout checklist, the other a floor to defend at $0.21 and a correction profile consistent with the reduced risk appetite of a bear market phase.

Watching the Hourly Close

From our desk, the load-bearing evidence here is not the triangle but the records behind the call. The open interest figures come from derivatives data and the whale sales are visible on-chain, so both legs of the Cardano argument can be re-checked against raw records instead of taken on one analyst's word. Martinez has also framed a testable thesis on XRP: a specific close, a specific percentage and a specific target, with his Cardano levels showing what the same framework produces when the data argues for defense. Whether XRP prints the $1.54 hourly close and then reaches the $1.70 zone stays where he placed it, in his scenario, pending the candle that confirms or kills it.