Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Ripple (XRP) price is up slightly by 0.02% today, July 11, to trade at $1.10 at the time of writing. The slight gain comes as trading volumes cool into the weekend, with CoinMarketCap showing that XRP’s volume are down by 25% to $762 million.

Traders are now bracing for volatility in the coming week with the CLARITY Act coming back in focus as the US Congress resumes sessions on July 13 after the July 4 recess.

Congress Schedules CLARITY Act Hearing Data from the US Congress website shows that the House Financial Services Committee will have a field hearing in New York regarding the CLARITY Act on July 17.

CLARITY Act Hearing This hearing was even confirmed by Congressman French Hill during an interview with FOX, where he said that lawmakers want to ensure that CLARITY can be merged with old legislation.

“We’ve got to get this market framework in place to be combined with the GENIUS Act”,” Hill said.

The Congressman’s remarks come after a CoinGape report revealed that the final draft for the CLARITY Act could drop between July 13 and July 17 and potentially move the XRP price.

Pro-crypto senators like Cynthia Lummis say that this final draft will be the last chance that the CLARITY Act has to pass before the mid-term elections happen in November.

The resumption of the US Senate from the July 4 holiday recess has also caused a slight increase in the odds of the CLARITY Act being approved from 40% on July 8 to 44% today, July 11.

XRP Price Eyes Wedge Breakout as Bearish Momentum Fades The price of XRP trades within a falling wedge pattern. This pattern has a depth of 22%, and it usually appears when the trend is about to change from a bearish one to a bullish one.

The RSI reading of 47 also suggests that bears might be losing their grip. This RSO has moved from 32 on June 30 to 47 on July 11, suggesting that buyers are slowly replacing sellers.

This RSI needs to make a higher high above 50 to confirm that the momentum has changed to bullish.

XRP value faces resistance at $1.16. Moving above this obstacle could pave the way for a 22% gain to $1.42.

XRP Price Chart But if XRP fails to close above $1.16, bears might force it back into consolidation within the falling wedge pattern, and the price could drop to the support of $1.03.

XRP Ledger Activity Hits Rare Lows SWIFT recently partnered with several banks affiliated with Ripple, but that did not increase network activity like is usually the case.

Instead, data from Santiment shows that the level of activity on the XRP Ledger is at the second-lowest level in 2026.

XRP Ledger saw only 25,350 active wallets on July 11 and 2,130 new wallets.

The number of new wallets on XRP Ledger is at the lowest point since November 2024, with Santiment saying that buyers are hesitating until there is a real catalyst that can push the price up.

Ripple released roughly $1 billion worth of XRP from its escrow this week, an amount large enough to catch the attention of traders watching the token’s price action closely.

Asked how to interpret the timing, given XRP’s recent price weakness, one analyst pushed back on the idea that the unlock signals anything unusual. “This is just the standard playbook for Ripple. We’ve seen this for years,” the analyst said, describing it as part of a broader redistribution of XRP into the hands of people who will actually use the underlying technology.

Ripple unlocks roughly 1 billion XRP tokens from its escrow, every single month. On a high-volume month, the company typically sells between 180 million and 300 million tokens, while Ripple typically relocks 70 to 80 percent of that supply right back into escrow. “It’s not as if Ripple sees the writing on the wall,” the analyst said. “This is standard business practice for the company.”

The bank narrative behind the numbers

The analyst pointed to a bigger story developing alongside the CLARITY Act, the PACE Act, separate legislation that could give Ripple direct access to the Federal Reserve system, too. Citing a previous interview, the analyst argued Ripple has “every incentive in the world” to lock up its remaining escrow and use it as collateral to become the first digital bank chartered in the United States.

A co-host on the discussion noted the relock percentage matters for gauging Ripple’s intent. A 90 percent relock this month would show Ripple is flush with capital, he said, pointing to active ETF inflows and corporate revenue as signs the company does not need to dilute the market by selling more tokens than necessary.

Reading the charts

Beyond the unlock, the hosts flagged a possible technical catalyst: XRP may be breaking out of a year-long descending channel, a move they said could align with historically favorable seasonal trends for the token heading into the fall.

Story Ends Here

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Italy’s largest bank disclosed an $18 million XRP position, and the interesting part is not the size but the plumbing: the exposure runs through Grayscale’s trust, not through wallets, keys, or even the shiny new ETFs. Bank crypto exposure has more than doubled in two quarters, and the wrappers banks choose reveal exactly how far the regulated world has actually come. This is the anatomy of how a bank buys a token.

Summary

Italy’s largest bank disclosed an $18 million XRP position through Grayscale’s trust, highlighting how regulated banks continue to prefer traditional securities over direct crypto holdings. European banks’ disclosed crypto exposure has more than doubled to $235 million, although most positions remain small, wrapped and focused on strategic exposure rather than treasury investments. The structure banks choose to hold crypto reflects regulatory, capital and custody constraints, offering a clearer signal of institutional adoption than the size of individual investments. The most institutionally significant XRP purchase of the year fits in a footnote. Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest banking group with over a trillion dollars in assets, disclosed a roughly $18 million position in XRP, acquired not on any crypto exchange, not through self-custody, not even through the spot exchange-traded funds that launched to such fanfare, but through shares of Grayscale’s XRP trust, a wrapper most retail traders stopped thinking about years ago.

Intesa bought an approximately $18 million position in the Grayscale XRP Trust

— Degi (@bryLFC88) July 9, 2026 Eighteen million dollars is a rounding error for Intesa, less than 0.002% of its balance sheet, and dismissing the disclosure on size would miss what it actually documents. Bank crypto exposure in aggregate has more than doubled across two quarters, from roughly $100 million to $235 million among disclosing European institutions, and each disclosure is a specimen of the same understudied question: when a regulated deposit-taking institution decides to hold a volatile digital asset, what does it actually buy, through what legal object, on whose books, and why that one? The answers are duller than the headlines and far more informative, because the wrapper a bank selects encodes everything, its regulators’ current mood, its capital treatment, its custody constraints, and its honest time horizon.

This piece uses the Intesa position as a dissection subject. It covers the menu of structures through which a bank can hold crypto and what each one costs in capital, operations, and optics; why a trust, of all things, beat both the ETFs and direct custody for this purchase; what the doubling of bank exposure does and does not signal about the institutional wave every forecast depends on; the XRP-specific reading, since the asset choice is itself information; and the checkable signals that would show bank demand becoming the structural bid the market has priced in advance so many times.

The menu: five ways a bank can own a coin A bank deciding to hold crypto chooses among five structures, and the choice is never about preference; it is about what its regulator, risk committee, and accounting framework will tolerate this quarter.

The first is direct ownership with self-custody: coins on the balance sheet, keys in the bank’s control. It is the purest exposure and the rarest, because it triggers everything at once, the harshest prudential capital treatment, under Basel-derived rules a risk weight so punitive that unhedged direct holdings can require capital near the position’s full value, plus operational custody risk the institution must build or buy, plus accounting volatility straight through earnings. A handful of pioneers run small direct books as strategic learning exercises; as a portfolio structure it barely exists.

The second is direct ownership with third-party custody: the bank owns coins held by a qualified custodian. It softens the operational problem and none of the capital problem, and it is the structure banks build for clients, custody as a fee business, far more often than for themselves; Intesa itself has run a proprietary desk and custody buildout along exactly these lines, which makes its choice of a different wrapper for this position all the more instructive.

The third is the exchange-traded fund: regulated, liquid, redeemable, tracking tightly through the creation-and-redemption machinery that keeps share and coin prices glued. For most institutions the ETF is the modern default, which is precisely why a bank bypassing it deserves attention.

The fourth is the trust or closed-end structure, the Grayscale lineage: a fund holding coins, whose shares trade as securities, historically without the redemption loop that disciplines ETF pricing, meaning shares can and famously did trade at large premiums and discounts to the underlying. The fifth is synthetic exposure, futures, notes, certificates, total-return swaps, owning the price without the asset, the structure of choice where regulators permit derivatives more readily than holdings.

JUST IN: Grayscale has categorized $XRP under the
"Global Payments" investment narrative, highlighting its role in cross-border payments and digital financial infrastructure. As institutional interest in blockchain continues to grow, #XRPArmy pic.twitter.com/g4NEi1p86Y

— Michelle Kirby X (@michelekirby623) July 10, 2026 Read as a ladder, the five structures run from maximum conviction and maximum friction at the top to minimum commitment at the bottom, and where an institution steps on reveals its constraints more honestly than its press releases. A bank in a jurisdiction with settled ETF access, clean capital rules, and a supportive supervisor buys the ETF. A bank that buys a trust is telling you something specific.

Why the trust: the unglamorous logic Intesa’s route through Grayscale’s XRP trust looks, at first glance, like choosing a flip phone, and the logic assembles quickly once the constraints are listed.

The first constraint is geography and availability. The US spot XRP ETFs are new, their European availability to a regulated Italian bank’s balance sheet runs through legal and distribution questions that a US-listed trust security, tradeable as an ordinary share, sidesteps; European institutions have bought American trust shares for years precisely because they slot into existing securities plumbing, custody, settlement, and reporting included, with no crypto-specific operational buildout at all. For a first position, or a small strategic one, the wrapper that requires zero new infrastructure wins on cost alone.

The second is the capital and accounting angle. A trust share is a security, held and risk-weighted as one under frameworks the bank already runs, while direct coin holdings drag the punitive crypto-specific capital treatment; the wrapper does not eliminate the exposure’s volatility, and it can materially simplify its regulatory life. The third is discretion and reversibility: an $18 million security position is entered, marked, and exited like any other line in a trading book, with no wallets to explain, no custodian onboarding, no board-level operational review, an experiment sized and structured to be abandonable, which is exactly how serious institutions run first experiments.

In diesem Video geht es um Goldman Sachs, Intesa Sanpaolo, sinkende XRP Bestände auf Börsen und die Frage, warum der Kurs trotz positiver Onchain Daten noch nicht wirklich reagiert.

Außerdem ordnen wir ein, ob die fehlende Krypto Liquidität wirklich verschwunden ist, oder nur… https://t.co/GcYvrwSBk7 pic.twitter.com/ttVelYqLEj

— CryptoTuts (@CryptoTuts) July 9, 2026 The fourth is the trust’s historical quirk turned feature: with spot ETFs now existing as conversion or competition targets, the old discount problem that made trusts hazardous has largely resolved, while the structure retains its accessibility. The instrument that spent years as the cautionary tale about wrappers, its discounts the very evidence that forced the ETF era into being, now serves as the quiet on-ramp for institutions whose plumbing has not caught up to the products the caution produced. Finance rarely wastes an old vehicle; it reassigns it.

The capital rules: the constraint underneath everything The single largest force shaping how banks hold crypto never appears in the headlines, so it earns its own section: prudential capital treatment, the rules deciding how much of a bank’s own equity must stand behind each asset it holds. The international framework finalized by the Basel Committee sorts crypto exposures into groups, with tokenized traditional assets and qualifying stablecoins receiving conventional treatment, and unbacked cryptoassets, the Bitcoin-and-XRP category, consigned to the punitive tier: a risk weight of 1,250%, the framework’s maximum, which in practice requires capital roughly equal to the exposure itself, plus an aggregate cap holding such exposures to a sliver of a bank’s Tier 1 capital. The design intent was explicit, to make direct crypto holdings nearly uneconomic for banks, and it succeeded: no meaningful direct bank crypto book exists anywhere under full Basel-aligned rules.

The wrapper economy documented in this piece is, in large part, the industry’s negotiated response to that number. A trust share or ETF position may, depending on jurisdiction and interpretation, route through securities and funds treatments instead of the maximum weight; synthetic exposures route through derivatives and market-risk frameworks; and client-custody businesses, where the bank never owns the coins at all, sit outside the exposure caps entirely, which is why custody is where bank crypto revenue actually lives. None of this is evasion, every structure is disclosed and supervised, and all of it is arbitrage in the honest sense: institutions selecting, among permitted forms, the one whose capital cost matches their conviction. The forward-looking point follows directly: the capital rules are under active review in multiple jurisdictions, industry bodies have pressed for recalibration as the classification legislation matures, and any softening of the 1,250% regime would do more for bank demand than a decade of conferences, because it changes the only number bank treasurers actually optimize. Watch the consultations, not the keynotes.

The specimen in context: who else, and how Intesa’s disclosure lands within a recognizable cohort, and the cohort’s composition sharpens the reading. European institutions dominate the disclosed-exposure aggregate for a structural reason: MiCA’s arrival gave the continent’s banks a supervisory framework to point to, and supervised clarity, even strict clarity, unlocks more institutional behavior than permissive ambiguity ever has. The cohort’s positions share the Intesa profile almost uniformly, small against the balance sheet, wrapped rather than direct, concentrated in the majors plus, notably, XRP, and framed internally as strategic learning. Around the disclosed positions sits the larger undisclosed economy: bank-run custody for funds and corporates, structured notes and certificates giving private-bank clients crypto exposure, and trading desks making markets in ETPs, all of which generate crypto revenue without crypto balance-sheet exposure and all of which grew straight through the drawdown. The honest map of bank adoption, in other words, is a pyramid: a vast base of client-service activity, a thin middle of wrapped proprietary positions like Intesa’s, and an apex of direct holdings that remains, by regulatory design, nearly empty. Adoption forecasts that conflate the layers, and most do, mistake the pyramid’s base for its apex and misprice both.

What $100M to $235M actually signals The aggregate number behind the Intesa specimen, disclosed bank crypto exposure more than doubling to $235 million in two quarters, invites two opposite readings, and the honest analysis requires holding both.

The deflationary reading starts with scale: $235 million across the European banking system is not institutional adoption; it is institutional curiosity, a few basis points of trading-book capacity spread across a handful of names, an order of magnitude below what single corporate treasuries deployed in the last cycle and three orders below the ETF complex. Banks hold these positions the way they hold any exotic, small, hedged or hedgeable, and structured for exit, and extrapolating a wave from a doubling of a tiny base is the oldest error in institutional-adoption forecasting. The doubling also coincides with the drawdown, which cuts both ways: it is conviction buying weakness, or it is desks accumulating inventory for client products rather than expressing any house view at all, and disclosures rarely distinguish the two.

The inflationary reading counts differently: it counts precedents. Every structure a bank uses for a small position is a structure approved, documented, and reusable for a large one; the expensive part of institutional adoption was never the buying but the permissioning, the risk-committee papers, the regulator conversations, the accounting memos, and each disclosed position is proof that some institution’s permissioning is complete. On this reading, $235 million is not the wave, it is the wave’s paperwork, and the doubling measures how fast the paperwork is clearing. The reading gains force from who is moving: Intesa is not a crypto-adjacent challenger but a systemically important incumbent whose choices get studied by every peer risk committee in Europe, and incumbent behavior is the single best-documented contagion vector in institutional finance.

Both readings share one implication worth stating plainly: the structural bank bid, the one in the conditional price forecasts, remains almost entirely in front of, not behind, the current market, which is precisely why the classification legislation gates so much of every forecast. Banks buy at the pace their constraints dissolve, and the constraints are dissolving on legislative and supervisory calendars, not market ones.

A note on the disclosure mechanics themselves rounds out the specimen. Bank positions of this kind surface through securities filings, fund shareholder registers, and periodic risk disclosures, each with its own lag and granularity, and the analysts who compiled the $235 million aggregate are stitching exactly these sources. The number is therefore a floor, not a census: positions below reporting thresholds, exposures inside synthetic structures, and holdings at institutions with lighter disclosure regimes all escape it, which means the true wrapped-proprietary layer is somewhat larger and its growth rate somewhat smoother than the headline doubling suggests. It also means the series improves mechanically as the asset class formalizes, more filings, finer categories, shorter lags, so part of every future increase will be measurement catching up with reality, a caveat worth carrying into each new headline about bank exposure records.

What a bank position is not Two category errors follow every bank-crypto disclosure, and clearing them sharpens what remains. The first is reading a trading-book position as a treasury strategy. Corporate treasury adopters hold coins as a reserve-asset thesis, financed by their capital structure and marked as conviction; a bank’s wrapped $18 million sits in a book built for exposures that come and go, sized inside limits designed to make its total loss immaterial, and often paired with hedges or client flows invisible from outside. The position’s information value is procedural, not directional: it proves the pipe exists, not that the water is committed. The second error is reading disclosure timing as buying timing. Positions surface through reporting cycles months after their construction, get built across many sessions to avoid moving thin markets, and can be inventory against structured products the bank has sold, not a view at all. The market’s habit of backdating conviction onto the disclosure date has embarrassed every analyst who indulged it, and the professional reading discipline is the same one every filing teaches: the fact is the exposure and its structure; the story is unrecoverable from public data and should be priced accordingly.

There is also the question of what would make a bank sell, which no adoption narrative ever models. Wrapped positions of this size exit for reasons that have nothing to do with crypto, quarter-end optics, risk-limit reshuffles, a supervisor’s raised eyebrow, a desk head’s rotation, and their departure would generate exactly the headlines their arrival did, inverted and equally overread. The institutional bid, when it truly forms, will be identifiable not by any single entry but by its behavior through stress: positions that persist across drawdowns, disclosures that grow through bad quarters, and wrapper migrations toward more committed structures while prices fall. By that standard, the current cohort is untested, the drawdown positions are its first examination, and the next two reporting cycles are worth more than the last ten announcements.

The XRP of it: why this asset, from this buyer The asset selection is its own signal, and it reads differently from a bank than it would from a fund. XRP is, among major assets, the one whose institutional story runs through exactly the world Intesa inhabits: cross-border payments, correspondent banking, and a corporate sponsor that has spent a decade selling to institutions like Intesa, an empire whose honest token accounting this publication has mapped. A European bank taking its crypto first step in XRP rather than only Bitcoin is choosing the asset whose bull case is denominated in its own industry’s plumbing, which makes the position readable as strategic reconnaissance as much as investment: a small, live stake in the asset one’s own payments division will inevitably be asked about.

The timing adds the contrarian layer: the position surfaces with XRP down roughly 70% from its peak, the tradable float at seven-year lows, and sentiment at cycle extremes, which is either exactly when patient institutional money historically steps in, or exactly the environment in which a small position is cheap enough to serve as an option on the payments thesis resolving. Eighteen million dollars does not move the asset. Eighteen million dollars of precedent, from this buyer, in this structure, at this point in the cycle, is the kind of data point the next dozen risk committees cite, and the market’s institutional wave, if it ever arrives, will be assembled out of citations exactly like it.

The historical rhyme deserves a paragraph, because banks have run this exact sequence before. Gold ETFs in the early 2000s, emerging-market debt in the 1990s, and high-yield credit before that each entered bank balance sheets the same way: first as client-service revenue, then as small wrapped proprietary positions justified as market-making inventory, then, after capital treatments matured and a cycle survived, as ordinary allocations nobody announced. The sequence’s clock is measured in years per stage, its motor is regulatory calibration, not price, and its tell, in every prior asset class, was the moment risk committees stopped writing special memos for the exposure, the bureaucratic non-event that never makes news and always precedes size. Crypto’s bank adoption is visibly mid-sequence: the client-service layer is thriving, the wrapped-position layer is doubling off a tiny base, and the special memos are still being written. The Intesa disclosure is one such memo made public, and the forecast it supports is not a price target but a schedule: the asset class is roughly one capital-rule revision and one uneventful cycle away from the stage where positions like this stop being articles.

One more actor deserves mention because it shadows every European bank’s calculus: the ECB and the digital-euro project, whose relationship with private crypto assets ranges from indifference to rivalry depending on the week. A eurozone bank’s crypto position lives under a supervisor whose own institution is building a competing settlement future, and the diplomacy of that position, small enough to be unobjectionable, wrapped enough to be conventional, useful enough to inform the bank’s own digital-asset strategy, explains the specimen’s every parameter as well as any market view does. Banks do not merely hold assets; they hold positions within relationships, and the wrapper is part of the diplomacy.

The signals that would show the wave forming The Intesa specimen suggests its own dashboard, and each line is public. Watch the disclosure aggregate, the $235 million line, for its next doubling and its composition, trusts versus ETFs versus direct, because wrapper migration toward more committed structures is the maturation signal. Watch European ETF and ETP access for banks, the plumbing whose arrival collapses the trust workaround. Watch the supervisory texture, capital-treatment consultations and national supervisor guidance, the constraint whose relaxation moves faster than any narrative. Watch whether custody businesses and proprietary positions converge, banks that custody for clients acquiring house exposure and vice versa, the pattern that preceded every prior asset class’s institutional normalization. And watch the legislation, always, because the classification question sets the risk weights and the risk weights set the size.

The conclusion the dissection supports is deliberately modest and, for that reason, durable. Intesa’s $18 million documents neither a wave nor a fad; it documents a procedure, the specific, replicable, now-approved path by which a trillion-dollar European bank holds a crypto asset without touching a key, and procedures, once they exist, get reused at whatever size conditions permit. The market has spent years pricing the day banks arrive. The disclosure’s quiet news is that the arrival, when it comes, will look exactly like this: no announcement, no wallet, a securities ticket in an old wrapper, and a footnote that compounds.

The dissection closes where it began, with proportion. Eighteen million dollars, one wrapper, one bank: as a market event it is nothing, and the piece has argued it is the most informative kind of nothing, a procedure caught on camera. Institutional adoption was never going to arrive as an announcement, because institutions do not announce; they file, and the filing cadence, the wrapper choices, and the capital consultations are the wave in its only observable form. Readers who want to track it need three bookmarks, the disclosure aggregates, the Basel-review docket, and the European ETP-access rulings, and one habit: when the next bank position surfaces, ask not how much but through what, because in this corner of the market, the plumbing is the story, and it has been telling it, quietly and in public, one footnote at a time.

And one sentence for the traders who read this far looking for the signal: there is none on the tape today, and there is a precise one coming, because bank flows, unlike whale flows, pre-announce themselves through rulemaking, and the rulemaking calendar is public. The edge in this corner of the market is not speed. It is literacy, and the literacy is teachable, which is what this dissection was for.

The specimen will be superseded, probably within a quarter, by a larger name or a bigger number, and the framework will not: five wrappers, one capital regime, a pyramid of adoption layers, and a disclosure lag between them all. Keep the framework, discard the headline, and the next footnote reads itself.

A closing housekeeping note: the exposure figures cited here reflect analyst compilations of public disclosures at this writing, the wrapper landscape is being actively reshaped by ETF access rulings and capital consultations, and readers applying this framework to future disclosures should expect the menu’s relative costs, though not its structure, to have shifted. The structure is the durable part; it always is.

The banks, unlike the traders, are in no hurry, and the wrappers, unlike the narratives, keep perfect records; between those two facts sits everything this piece has argued.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile, and you can lose your entire investment. Figures are current as of July 9, 2026, and may change. Always do your own research.

XRP price is up by 1.6% today, July 9, to trade at $1.09 at the time of writing. These gains come as SWIFT announces that it will be working with 17 banks, some of which are affiliated with Ripple, for a pilot phase for its blockchain-based ledger.

SWIFT Partners With Banks For Tokenized Cross-Border Payments SWIFT has announced that it will be working with 17 banks to check whether its blockchain can be used to facilitate payments made between countries.

Some of the banks named in this project, like Standard Chartered and UBS, use Ripple to custody crypto assets or to enable payments across countries using the XRP Ledger.

This initiative comes after Ripple Treasury joined the SWIFT Certified Partner Program in April 2026.

However, an analyst on X notes that Ripple’s partnership with SWIFT might not be bullish for the price of XRP because SWIFT will not use the XRP token on its blockchain-based ledger.

“Sorry $XRP holders, but the “bridge currency” and “liquidity” is tokenized deposits; not a L1 gas token,” the analyst said.

Still, XRP price made a slight gain of 1.5% on the news of SWIFT working with banks affiliated with Ripple.

XRP Technical Outlook as Price Remains Below Key EMA Levels The price of XRP has closed below the 20-day EMA of $1.11 for three straight days. This move suggests that the short-term trend is favoring bears.

If XRP fails to recover above this 20-day EMA, the price could drop to the psychological support of $1.

A drop to $1 could increase selling pressure that could pull the price down to the November 2024 low of $0.87.

However, buyers might come back because geopolitical tensions are easing after Trump said that Iran wants to make a deal for peace to end the conflict that began in February 2026.

This buying pressure could push the XRP price to the 50-day EMA level of $1.17.

XRP Price Chart However, the RSI reading of 43 suggests that the momentum is favoring bears and XRP could drop tp $0.87.

XRP ETFs Record Highest Outflows in Three Months Data from SoSoValue shows that spot XRP ETFs saw $7.29 million in outflows on July 8. This is the highest outflow that these ETFs have seen since March, 2026.

XRP ETF Inflows The outflows suggest that there is low demand for XRP by institutions, and this could make the price to drop to the psychological support of $1.

Data from Coinglass also suggests that the sentiment around XRP is bearish because of the declining long/short ratio. This ratio has dropped to 0.96, suggesting that there are more short positions than long positions.

XRP’s open interest has also dropped from $2.58 billion on July 5 to $2.33 billion today, July 9, suggesting that there is also weak demand coming from speculative traders, and the price could keep dropping.

Updated July 9, 2026. The seven US spot XRP ETFs now hold roughly $1 billion in assets and about 970 million XRP after an eighth straight week of net inflows — even as the XRP token price has barely moved. Here is the latest on flows, AUM, and which funds are leading.

Key facts

Seven US spot XRP ETFs are trading; combined AUM sits near $1 billion (~$988M) with roughly 970.9 million XRP locked as of July 8, 2026. Cumulative net inflows have held near $1.4 billion since the November 2025 launch. The funds logged their eighth consecutive week of net inflows, including +$6.55 million on July 2 (after a small -$1.86M outflow on July 1). Leaders: Bitwise XRP ETF (1XRP) ~$245.3M AUM; Canary XRP ETF (2XRPC) ~$225.9M; Franklin XRP ETF (3XRPZ) ~$167.9M. Seven spot XRP ETFs now hold about $1 billion The US spot XRP ETF complex has grown to seven funds since the first products launched in November 2025, and their combined assets under management now sit near the $1 billion mark — about $988 million as of July 8, 2026, according to fund-flow trackers. Together the funds have pulled roughly 970.9 million XRP off the open market and into regulated custody, a figure that has kept climbing even through XRP’s price weakness.

That growth answers a question a lot of traders are still searching: yes, spot XRP ETFs are live and trading in the US, and the line-up has expanded from the original five funds to seven, with additional issuers filed. The wrappers give institutions a compliant way to hold XRP without managing keys or custody themselves — the same structural shift that reshaped Bitcoin and Ether demand a cycle earlier.

Eight straight weeks of net inflows The headline for flows is consistency. US spot XRP ETFs have now recorded their eighth consecutive week of net inflows, with a +$6.55 million day on July 2 following a minor -$1.86 million outflow on July 1. Cumulatively, the funds have absorbed close to $1.4 billion since launch, peaking above $1.5 billion earlier in the spring before settling into a steadier accumulation pace.

The pattern matters because it is spot demand, not leverage: an ETF creation removes real XRP from circulation into a custodial wrapper, so a sustained inflow streak shrinks the effective float regardless of short-term price action.

The divergence: institutions keep buying while the price stalls The most striking part of the story is the gap between flows and price. XRP ETFs have logged eight straight weeks of inflows and nearly a billion dollars in assets, yet the XRP token has stayed weak, drifting rather than rallying on the institutional bid. Analysts frame it as a coiled-spring setup — accumulation building under a flat price — but it is equally a caution: inflows alone have not been enough to move spot while the broader crypto market trades cautiously into the Federal Reserve’s July 28–29 meeting.

For a fuller view of the bull and bear scenarios behind the token itself, see our XRP price prediction.

Which XRP ETF is the biggest? Fund Ticker Approx. AUM Bitwise XRP ETF 1XRP ~$245.3M Canary XRP ETF 2XRPC ~$225.9M Franklin XRP ETF 3XRPZ ~$167.9M AUM figures as of early July 2026; the remaining funds make up the balance of the ~$1B complex. Source: XRP ETF flow trackers.

What to watch next Three things decide whether the flows finally translate into price. First, whether the inflow streak extends into a ninth and tenth week — the longer institutions accumulate through weakness, the more constrained the float becomes. Second, the July 28–29 FOMC meeting, the nearest macro catalyst for all of crypto. Third, seasonality: July has historically been XRP’s strongest month, with an average return near +10%, so a break in the current stall would fit the calendar. Watch the daily flow prints and the custody-token count — those are the leading indicators of demand between now and the next catalyst.

FAQ Are there spot XRP ETFs trading in the US in 2026?
Yes. Seven US spot XRP ETFs are live, up from the original five, holding roughly $1 billion in combined assets as of July 2026.

How much have XRP ETFs pulled in?
Cumulative net inflows are near $1.4 billion since the November 2025 launch, with an eighth consecutive week of net inflows through early July 2026.

How much XRP is locked in ETF custody?
About 970.9 million XRP across the seven funds as of July 8, 2026 — a figure that has kept rising even as the token price stayed weak.

Which XRP ETF is the largest?
The Bitwise XRP ETF (1XRP) leads with roughly $245 million in AUM, followed by Canary (2XRPC) and Franklin (3XRPZ).

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. ETF AUM and flow figures are third-party estimates and change daily. Cryptocurrency investments carry risk, including the possible loss of principal. Always do your own research and consult a licensed adviser. Sources: XRP ETF flow trackers, U.Today, TradingNews (July 2026).

XRP spot exchange-traded funds have recorded a substantial $7.29 million net outflow. 

This is the most significant single-day loss that these funds have recorded since March.

The Bitwise factor 

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Notably, a single fund for the unfortunate outflows. The Bitwise XRP ETF fully absorbed the $7.29 million net redemption.

However, despite bleeding capital during the mid-week trading session, the broader outlook for the Bitwise product remains rather positive. 

The fund's cumulative historical net inflow still sits at an impressive $494 million. 

However, it has lost only a fraction of the total capital it has attracted since its inception.

Reen volatility The July 8 outflow snapped a period of relative calm and positive momentum for XRP investment ETFs. As reported by U.Today, these products had shown impressive resilience despite all the bleeding that Bitcoin and Ethereum vehicles had suffered. 

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The preceding two trading days, July 6 and July 7, saw completely flat flows with zero net movement. Before the weekend, the funds actually logged a solid $6.55 million net inflow on July 2, which itself followed a minor $1.86 million outflow on July 1.

On June 29, the funds pulled in a massive $15.34 million, building on an equally impressive $15.63 million net inflow recorded just days prior on June 26. 

A drop in the bucket The recent $7.29 million dip pales in comparison to the massive capitulation event witnessed on January 29, when XRP spot ETFs lost a staggering $93 million in a single brutal trading session.

Despite the recent bumps in the road, cumulative net inflows across all approved XRP spot ETFs continue to hover around a healthy $1.40 billion mark. 

Ripple-backed t54.ai has announced the launch of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) in a bid to build an agentic economy on the network. This comes as the network surpasses 1 million agentic payments.

XRP Ledger AI Hub Goes Live As Network Records New Milestone In an X post, the Ripple-backed firm announced the launch of the XRPL AI Hub, providing a single destination for agents, AI projects, tools, and payment services building on the network. The firm noted that the goal is to make the XRPL AI ecosystem easier to discover, navigate, and build on.

“As more agents, merchants, and services come to XRPL, builders need one place to see what is live, what is possible, and where to contribute,” t54.ai said. The firm added that the hub starts with three core areas, including index, which involves live X402 payment activity on the XRP Ledger.

Furthermore, the hub includes docs, SDKs, repos, and developer resources. The third area is the directory, which includes AI projects, agents, services, and merchants building on the XRPL. t54.ai also revealed that they launched this initiative with support from Ripple developers and the XRPL Foundation.

This move comes just weeks after Ripple launched the XRP Ledger AI starter kit, enabling AI agents to pay with XRP and RLUSD on the network. The rollout back then notably enabled X402 payments, with XRPL now a supported chain in the X402 protocol.

XRPL Foundation Announces New Milestone In an X post, the XRP Ledger Foundation announced that the network has surpassed 1 million agentic payments via the x402 protocol. “Time to double down,” the Foundation added.

We just surpassed 1,000,000 agentic payments via x402 on the $XRP Ledger. Time to double down.

XRPL AI Hub is a comprehensive new ecosystem platform for builders, users, and enthusiasts.

Welcome to the agentic economy on the XRP Ledger.https://t.co/VeEwNmEPyp https://t.co/IfXDi2XOno pic.twitter.com/FGcEjj0BkB

— XRP Ledger Foundation (@XRPLF) July 8, 2026

The Foundation also welcomed the launch of the XRPL AI Hub, noting that it is a comprehensive new ecosystem platform for builders, users, and enthusiasts. XRPL validator Vet said that he wasn’t surprised at the milestone.

He opined that the XRPL Ledger is uniquely positioned with its protocol design that fits very well with what AI needs. “Low cost infra, predictable fees, a native asset XRP that’s listed everywhere and is liquid. and of course a native Decentralized Exchange that lets you swap between assets 24/7 with no censorship,” Vet added.

For more information about AI agents, please check out the Top Web3 AI Agents Directory

Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license approval in Luxembourg completes Ripple’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) requirements, making it fully compliant for cryptoasset services across the European Economic Area

Luxembourg — 6 July 2026 – Ripple, the leading provider of blockchain-based enterprise solutions across traditional and digital finance, today announced it has received authorisation of its Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF). The authorisation follows the preliminary approval announced in June 2026 and confirms Ripple as fully MiCA-compliant, with its end-to-end regulated crypto payments product now available to financial institutions, corporates and businesses across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area.

“This CASP authorisation means Ripple enters the post-transitional MiCA era fully compliant and ready to scale,” said Cassie Craddock, Managing Director, UK & Europe at Ripple. “The institutions we work with across Europe are looking to build their digital assets services alongside regulated partners, and Ripple is licensed and ready to meet that demand.”

Alongside its EU EMI license, Ripple’s CASP approval makes it one of a small number of digital asset firms to have full authorisation under MiCA, adding to a global portfolio of more than 75 regulatory licenses.

About Ripple

Founded in 2012, Ripple is the leading provider of blockchain-based enterprise solutions across traditional and digital finance. Its solutions span global payments, custody, liquidity, and treasury management, serving as a one-stop shop for moving, storing, exchanging, and managing value. Ripple's stablecoin, RLUSD, and the cryptocurrency XRP underpinning these solutions allow Ripple and its customers to shape the modern financial system.

Media Enquiries

Celine Cheung

[email protected]

Growth in the number of users on the XRP Ledger network has become increasingly apparent thanks to on-chain data. James Rule XRP, a creator of crypto education content, revealed that wallets created in 2024 and 2025 now account for nearly 40% of all wallets on the network. This highlights a period of strong and steady growth for the XRP Ledger over the last two years.

Wallet statistics highlight user adoptionUnlike price volatility, the number of new wallets provides a more robust indicator of long-term network adoption. Each new wallet represents either a new user or institution joining the XRP ecosystem. This participation ranges from holding the asset and processing payments to issuing tokens, developing decentralized applications, or engaging in tokenization activities.

With around 40% of XRP wallets established in just 2024 and 2025, it is clear that network growth is driven by more than short-lived price movements, reflecting deeper adoption.

While multiple wallets can belong to the same user and therefore wallet numbers may not exactly mirror unique users, the sheer magnitude of the increase points to broadening interest across the network. Notably, this expansion comes after a protracted period of regulatory uncertainty for Ripple and XRP in the United States.

Corporate engagement supports network expansionThis period of rapid growth has coincided with higher institutional interest. Made in USA Inc., a US-based technology firm, recently made a significant investment by acquiring a complete technology stack for the XRP Ledger, affirming its commitment to the network. The move underscores the XRP Ledger’s emerging role as a platform for enterprise blockchain solutions. Made in USA Inc. is recognized for its focus on technology-driven initiatives in the US market.

Mini glossary: XRPL, or XRP Ledger, is an open-source blockchain network tailored for payments and asset transfers. Tokenization refers to representing physical or digital assets on a blockchain.

This investment suggests that companies are pivoting from short-term trading to real-world use cases. The fact that activity on the network is being driven by infrastructure investment, not just market speculation, signals the foundation for a new phase of growth for the XRP Ledger.

Rising demand in Japan stands outA similar upward trend is being observed internationally. Japan’s SBI VC Trade, operating under the SBI Holdings umbrella, has announced that its customer accounts have surpassed 2 million. As a digital asset trading platform, SBI VC Trade’s customer milestone and its XRP and Bitcoin reward programs signal sustained interest in digital assets.

SBI VC Trade’s milestone of more than 2 million customer accounts—alongside growing institutional investment in the XRP Ledger—shows that the network’s use is expanding beyond speculative trading.

With the Japanese yen under pressure, investors’ pivot toward alternative assets is supporting demand for digital currencies. The combination of rising wallet numbers, increased institutional investment, and broader participation raises expectations that on-chain volume, liquidity, and developer activity in the XRP Ledger network may continue to strengthen over time.

For years, discussion around XRP centered largely on regulatory matters and price movements. Now, the latest data show a growing focus on measurable user adoption. The surge in new wallets over the past two years suggests that the XRP Ledger could be entering a fresh phase of expansion.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Exchange reserves have fallen to a seven-year low of about 1.6 billion XRP, half what they were at the October 2025 peak. ETFs have absorbed nearly a billion tokens. Ripple still holds roughly 36 billion in escrow. This is the full map of where XRP’s supply actually sits in mid-2026, what moved, what it means, and why a shrinking float has so far failed to move the price.

Summary

XRP exchange reserves have fallen to a seven year low while spot ETFs have accumulated nearly one billion tokens and long term holders continue moving coins into private wallets. Ripple still controls about 36 billion XRP in escrow, but steady monthly releases and relocks have not stopped exchange balances from shrinking to multi year lows. The report says tighter supply alone has not lifted XRP’s price, with weak market demand continuing to outweigh the effects of a declining tradable float. Something unusual is happening to XRP’s supply, and it is happening quietly, underneath a price chart that has spent 2026 telling a story of decline. Exchange reserves, the pool of tokens sitting on trading venues ready to be sold, have fallen to roughly 1.6 billion XRP, the lowest level in seven years and down about 50% from the October 2025 peak of 3.76 billion. On Binance alone, the largest venue for the asset, reserves have dropped 20% since November 2024 to about 2.6 billion tokens across its wallets, pushing a metric called the Scarcity Index to its highest reading in more than two years. Meanwhile the seven US spot ETFs have quietly accumulated more than 970 million XRP, locked in custody on behalf of fund holders, after nine consecutive weeks of net inflows.

Tokens are leaving the places where they can be sold and accumulating in the places where they tend to sit still. In most assets, that migration is the textbook setup for a supply squeeze. In XRP, the price has fallen anyway, trading near $1.13, down roughly 70% from its July 2025 peak of $3.65, through the entire period in which the float was tightening.

That contradiction is the story. This piece maps the full distribution of XRP’s supply as of mid-2026: what sits on exchanges, what the ETFs hold, what Ripple controls in escrow and operational wallets, and what the remaining tens of billions in private hands are doing. It then works through why a halving of exchange reserves has not produced the price response the squeeze thesis predicts, the competing explanations for the gap, and the specific conditions under which a tight float starts to matter. The supply side of XRP has rarely been this interesting; the demand side is the reason nobody has noticed.

The map: 100 billion tokens, five buckets XRP’s supply structure is unlike any other major asset, and the map has to start from its founding fact: all 100 billion tokens were created at launch in 2012. There is no mining, no issuance schedule, no future supply beyond what already exists. About 14 million XRP have been permanently destroyed as transaction fees since then, a rounding error, leaving total supply just below 100 billion. Everything else is a question of where the existing tokens sit, and in mid-2026 they sit in five buckets.

The first bucket is Ripple’s escrow, the largest single concentration of XRP in existence at roughly 36 billion tokens, about 36% of total supply. These are time-locked on-chain contracts releasing one billion XRP on the first of each month, of which Ripple typically relocks 600 to 800 million and keeps a net 200 to 300 million for operations, a mechanism this publication has explained in full. In July, Ripple relocked about 70% of the monthly billion, releasing 300 million into circulation. The escrow is the structural overhang critics cite and the transparency mechanism defenders praise, and either way it is the slowest-moving bucket: at current net-release rates, depletion is roughly nine years out.

The second bucket is circulating supply proper, about 62 billion tokens, and the remaining buckets are subdivisions of it. Exchange reserves, the third bucket, are the sellable edge of the market: roughly 1.6 billion tokens across venues, the seven-year low. The fourth bucket is the ETF complex: seven US spot funds holding a combined 970 million or so tokens, a bit over $1 billion in assets, tokens held by custodians and effectively removed from trading circulation for as long as fund investors stay put. The fifth bucket, by far the largest slice of circulating supply, is everything else: private wallets, corporate treasuries, whale cold storage, and long-term holders, somewhere near 59 billion tokens whose owners have, on the evidence of on-chain data, been net withdrawers from exchanges for over a year.

Two things stand out from the map. First, the actively tradable float, the exchange reserves, is now under 3% of circulating supply and under 2% of total supply, remarkably thin for a top-six asset by market value. Second, the two fastest-growing buckets, ETF custody and private cold storage, are both one-way doors in the short term: tokens flow in easily and come back out only when holders make an affirmative decision to sell.

What moved, and why The reshaping of the map over the past eighteen months has three drivers, each visible on-chain.

The first driver is the ETF complex, which did not exist before November 2025. Since the first spot XRP fund launched, the products have absorbed roughly $1.5 billion in cumulative inflows, and because they hold the underlying token, every dollar of inflow is a market purchase moved into custody. The funds have now recorded nine consecutive weeks of net inflows, adding $17 million in the latest week even as Bitcoin and Ethereum funds bled, a rotation this publication has tracked. Nearly a billion tokens now sit in ETF custody, and the mechanism only reverses if fund investors redeem at scale, which, so far, they have done on exactly one notable day, the quarter-end outflow of June 30.

The second driver is whale and institutional withdrawal. CryptoQuant data shows the Binance drawdown accelerating recently, from about 2.8 billion tokens in May to 2.6 billion in early July, exactly the window in which the Scarcity Index broke out to 0.77. Large-holder activity has strengthened while retail stays cautious, new-wallet creation hit a three-month high, and Korean venues have recorded repeated multi-million-token outflows. The pattern, tokens moving from hot exchange wallets to cold private ones, is the classic signature of accumulation by holders with no near-term intention to sell.

Notably, this is the reverse of December 2024, when the Scarcity Index collapsed because holders were depositing XRP onto Binance in bulk to sell the rally to $3; today’s flows run the other way, out of the venues, into storage, at prices two-thirds lower.

The third driver is the escrow’s steady arithmetic. Ripple’s net release of 200 to 300 million tokens a month adds roughly 4-6% to circulating supply annually, a bounded, scheduled inflation the market can model years ahead. In 2026 the company has if anything leaned conservative, relocking 70% in recent months, and part of what it does release goes to institutional counterparties off-exchange, never touching the tradable float at all. The escrow is a source of supply, but it is a metered one, and its pace has not changed while the exchange drawdown accelerated, which means the drawdown is demand-side behavior, not a supply-side trick.

The puzzle: a tightening float and a falling price Here is where the story stops being simple. Every element above, reserves halved, ETFs absorbing, whales withdrawing, metered issuance, belongs to the standard playbook of a supply squeeze, the setup in which shrinking availability meets steady demand and the price ratchets upward because sellers become scarce. XRP has instead spent 2026 falling, from $2.41 in January to near $1 in late June, before the modest recovery to $1.13. The float tightened; the price halved. Any honest supply analysis has to explain that, and there are three serious explanations, not mutually exclusive.

The first is that scarcity on exchanges measures potential, not pressure. A thin order book amplifies whatever demand arrives; it does not create demand. Through 2026, demand has been the missing side: derivatives open interest collapsed from last year’s highs, retail participation stayed weak, funding rates flipped decisively negative as price approached $1, and ETF inflows, while persistent, ran at a pace of tens of millions per week, roughly the same order of magnitude as Ripple’s monthly net escrow release in dollar terms. Australian lawyer and longtime XRP commentator Bill Morgan has made the sharper version of this point: neither the supply-squeeze thesis nor the older escrow-dump fear explains XRP’s price well, because the dominant variable is simply Bitcoin, which fell through the same months and dragged the whole market with it. On this reading, the tight float is dry tinder, and 2026 has been a year without a spark.

The second explanation is that the headline reserve numbers may overstate the tightness. Skeptics of the squeeze thesis note that measured exchange reserves depend on which wallets analysts attribute to which venues, that internal transfers can masquerade as outflows, and that estimates of total platform-held XRP across all venues and custodians run far higher than the headline 1.6 billion, with some placing 14 to 16 billion tokens within fast reach of order books. The February-March episode in which roughly 350 million XRP dipped and rebounded on Binance, likely internal wallet reshuffling rather than organic flow, illustrates how noisy the data is. If the true sellable supply is several multiples of the visible reserve, the squeeze is further away than the dashboards suggest.

The third explanation is structural: the sellers who matter are not on exchanges yet. Millions of tokens were accumulated between $1.50 and $1.90 during the spring’s failed rallies, and holders underwater at those levels represent a standing wall of supply that will migrate back onto exchanges precisely when price approaches their break-even. Add Ripple’s monthly release and the possibility of ETF redemptions in a risk-off shock, and the tight float is best understood as tight at current prices, with reinforcements waiting at higher ones. Santiment’s MVRV data showing holders at their deepest unrealized losses in the token’s history cuts both ways: it signals capitulation-grade sentiment, and it also marks exactly where the exit orders cluster.

How to read the metrics without fooling yourself Because the supply story runs on a handful of dashboards, and because those dashboards are routinely misread in both directions, a short field guide to the metrics is worth the space.

Exchange reserves are an attribution exercise, not an audit. Analytics firms tag wallets they believe belong to venues and sum the balances, which means the headline number moves when tagging improves, when exchanges reorganize custody, and when internal transfers cross the tagged perimeter, none of which involves a single token changing owners. The 350 million XRP that appeared to leave and re-enter Binance across February and March was almost certainly internal wallet management, and any single week’s reserve print should be read with that episode in mind. The signal is in the trend across months and across independent data providers, and on that standard the 2026 drawdown is robust: the direction has been consistent since late 2024, it appears in CryptoQuant, exchange-published data, and third-party trackers alike, and it has accelerated instead of mean-reverting.

The Scarcity Index is a ratio, and ratios have two moving parts. The index compares available supply on Binance against demand conditions, so it can rise because tokens leave, because buying absorbs, or both, and it can whipsaw, as it did on the round trip from 0.80 in spring to 0.34 in June to 0.77 in July, without the underlying reserve base moving anywhere near as violently. Its historical extremes are more informative than its level: the deeply negative readings of December 2024 marked holders flooding coins onto the venue to sell a top, and the current two-year high marks the opposite regime, coins leaving into weakness. As a regime indicator it has value; as a timing tool it has embarrassed everyone who used it as one this year.

ETF holdings are the cleanest series in the entire picture, because fund custodians disclose and the products file, which is why the roughly 970 million tokens across the seven funds is the number this piece leans on hardest. Even here, one habit matters: distinguish flows from assets. Net assets fall when the price falls even while inflows continue, which is exactly what happened through the spring, deposits arriving as valuations shrank, and reading the AUM decline as investor exit inverted the truth. Flow data, positive for nine consecutive weeks, is the demand signal; asset data is mostly a price echo.

Escrow figures, finally, come with the strongest health warning of all, because the number that matters is not the billion that unlocks but the net that stays out, and the net is only knowable after the relock lands days later. Ripple’s own quarterly reports, the on-chain escrow contracts, and the monthly relock transactions are all public, and the discipline is to compute the net against the trailing 200-to-300-million average before drawing any conclusion. A month in which the net spikes above the band is a genuine signal about the company’s cash needs; a month of headlines about a billion-token unlock that ends in a 70% relock, like this July’s, is a signal about headlines. Every metric in this story is public, which is XRP’s genuine advantage as an object of analysis, and every one of them rewards the reader who checks the denominator before repeating the numerator.

What history says about tightening floats The squeeze thesis is not being invented for XRP in 2026; it has a track record in this asset and others, and the record is worth consulting because it cuts both ways.

The supportive precedent is 2024. Exchange outflows through that year preceded the powerful multi-month rally that carried XRP from under a dollar to its January 2025 highs above $3, with Korean regional demand and shrinking sell-side reserves amplifying the move once the SEC settlement and ETF approvals supplied the demand spark. The structure of that episode maps closely onto today’s: months of quiet withdrawal, a scarcity metric stretching to extremes, skeptics dismissing the data, and then a catalyst arriving into a market with far fewer sellers than buyers expected. Holders who lived through it read the current seven-year-low reserves as the same picture at an earlier frame.

The cautionary precedents are just as instructive. The Scarcity Index itself has whipsawed within 2026: it climbed to nearly 0.80 in the spring, sagged to 0.34 by late June amid heavy long liquidations, then broke out to 0.77 in the first week of July, and the price fell through the entire sequence. A metric that can round-trip that violently inside one quarter is measuring flow conditions, not destiny, and the June reading arrived alongside more than $13 million in single-day long liquidations, a reminder that leverage positioning can overwhelm spot scarcity on any given week. December 2024 offers the mirror lesson: reserves ballooned precisely at the top, as holders raced to deposit and sell the $3 rally, which is to say the metric is at its most bullish after prices have already fallen and its most bearish after they have already risen, a lagging emotional gauge as much as a leading structural one.

The broader crypto record adds a final nuance. Bitcoin’s great supply-squeeze narratives, the 2020-21 exchange exodus, the post-ETF custody absorption of 2024, each eventually mattered, and each mattered on the demand side’s schedule, not the supply side’s. Assets have sat at multi-year reserve lows for quarters while prices drifted, and then repriced in weeks once flows arrived, because a thin float does nothing until someone leans on it, at which point it does everything at once. That asymmetry, long stretches of irrelevance punctuated by sudden amplification, is the honest historical summary, and it is why the traders who take the supply map seriously express the view through patience and position sizing, the same execution discipline any thin market demands, rather than through timing calls the data cannot support.

There is one more structural actor worth watching that previous cycles lacked: the corporate and fund treasuries. Beyond the seven ETFs, a growing roster of listed companies has adopted XRP treasury strategies, and the ETF custodian wallets themselves have become the single most legible accumulation channel in the asset’s history, absorbing roughly 750 million tokens in their first two months alone. Treasury demand is slower and stickier than trader demand, it neither chases rallies nor panics in drawdowns on the same timescale, and its growth quietly raises the floor beneath the float. Whether it grows fast enough to matter against escrow issuance is, like everything in this story, a race whose lap times are published monthly.

What would make the float matter The supply map becomes decisive only when demand shows up, so the forward-looking question is what could supply the spark, and the candidates are concrete.

The nearest is legal. The CLARITY Act’s commodity classification for XRP, if enacted, is the gate behind which the large conditional forecasts sit: JPMorgan and Standard Chartered have each projected $4 to $8.4 billion in first-year ETF inflows under passage, an order of magnitude above the current run rate.

Flows of that size, arriving into a float of under two billion exchange-held tokens, are the scenario in which the scarcity math stops being academic; the Senate’s three-week window is therefore as much a supply-side story as a regulatory one. The second candidate is institutional adoption converting to token demand through collateral and settlement use, the slow path whose honest accounting runs through Ripple Prime, and the third is simply the market cycle: XRP has historically fallen harder than Bitcoin in downturns and snapped back harder in recoveries, and a thin float mechanically steepens the snapback.

Against these, the checkable risks: a CLARITY failure pushing institutional flows past 2027, ETF inflows decelerating or reversing for consecutive weeks, or reserves rebuilding as underwater holders redeposit into any rally. The dashboard for all of it is public. Exchange reserves, the Scarcity Index, weekly ETF flows, and the monthly escrow relock are each published within days, and together they will show the squeeze forming, or failing, in close to real time.

The conclusion the map supports is narrower than either camp’s slogan. XRP’s tradable supply has genuinely, measurably contracted to multi-year lows while long-horizon buckets absorbed the difference, and that contraction has been irrelevant to price for a year because demand collapsed faster than the float did. Scarcity is not a catalyst; it is a multiplier waiting for one. The honest position is that XRP enters the second half of 2026 with the most squeeze-prone supply structure it has had since at least 2019 and no evidence yet of the demand that would trigger it, which makes the supply map neither bullish nor bearish on its own, but the single best lens for judging how violently the price will move when the demand question, one way or the other, finally resolves.

One final frame is worth carrying away, because it reconciles everything above into a single sentence: XRP in mid-2026 is an asset whose company is accumulating credentials, whose long-horizon holders are accumulating tokens, and whose traders have spent a year accumulating losses, and the supply map is the ledger on which all three behaviors are legible at once. The reserves data records the holders’ conviction, the ETF flows record the institutions’ patient entry, the escrow relocks record the company’s restraint, and the price records the absence, so far, of anyone forced to compete for a shrinking float. Markets in this configuration tend to resolve abruptly rather than gracefully, because thin floats do not permit gradual repricing in either direction: the same scarcity that would turbocharge an inflow shock also means a demand collapse finds few bids on the way down, which is the double edge the squeeze narratives rarely mention. The map says the stage is set. It has never claimed to know the play.

For readers who want to run the numbers themselves, the recipe is short. Take the circulating supply of roughly 62 billion, subtract the ETF custody balance published in the funds’ daily disclosures, subtract the aggregated exchange reserves from at least two independent trackers, and treat the remainder as the private-holder bucket whose behavior the withdrawal trends describe. Cross-check the month’s escrow arithmetic against the on-chain relock, and note the week’s ETF flow direction. Fifteen minutes of public data, repeated monthly, reproduces every structural claim in this piece and will catch the turn, whichever way it breaks, well before the headlines do.

The last variable, as always with this asset, is the one no dashboard tracks: how much of the withdrawn supply belongs to hands that will actually hold through the next stress test. Cold-storage balances built at $1.10 by buyers who watched the token at $3.65 carry a different resolve than balances built chasing a rally, and the 2026 drawdown has, if nothing else, transferred an unusual share of the float to owners who bought weakness deliberately. That is not a prediction. It is the one qualitative fact the quantitative map quietly implies, and the one that will decide whether the next demand shock meets a wall of break-even sellers or an empty room.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. On-chain and market figures are estimates current as of July 8, 2026, and may change. Always do your own research.

Tue, 7/07/2026 - 20:30

Clearstream, the major European post-trade services provider and subsidiary of the Deutsche Börse Group, is doubling down on its digital asset strategy by expanding its institutional cryptocurrency custody offering.

Clearstream, the major European post-trade services provider and subsidiary of the Deutsche Börse Group, has expanded its cryptocurrency custody footprint. 

The firm has announced the addition of a roster of new cryptocurrencies, including the Ripple-linked XRP, Stellar (XLM), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC), and Avalanche (AVAX). These new digital assets join Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). 

According to the firm, this expansion caters to the growing demand for MiCA-compliant (Markets in Crypto-Assets) digital assets within institutional finance.

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Initial entry into crypto Clearstream is one of the world's largest settlement and custody firms. It provides infrastructure securities across 60 different markets.

In early 2025, the Deutsche Börse Group announced that Clearstream would begin offering crypto custody and settlement services to its institutional clients.

The launch, which officially went live in April 2025, was made possible via an internal partnership. Clearstream used Crypto Finance (another entity within the Deutsche Börse Group that had recently secured a highly coveted MiCAR license) as its sub-custodian. 

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This structure made it possible for Clearstream to rely on Crypto Finance's expertise while maintaining strict regulatory compliance across Europe.

As mentioned above, the original offering was strictly limited to the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization: Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Clients of Clearstream’s International Central Securities Depository (ICSD) were able to use their existing accounts in Clearstream Banking S.A. (Luxembourg) to access cryptocurrency custody and settlement.

The most recent additions show that the firm is doubling down on crypto. 

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The US market for spot ETFs based on XRP has held its place in the top league, returning above the psychologically important threshold of $1 billion in net assets. According to a fresh report from SoSoValue, the combined assets under management of five funds stood at $1.05 billion.

However, a detailed look inside the sector shows that this comeback was not the result of new investment inflows, but a mathematical rescue driven by the price surge of XRP itself.

Math behind the comeback to billion-dollar clubThe US XRP ETFs returned to the billion-dollar threshold thanks to an organic recalculation of the value of their underlying holdings. Over the past week, the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger posted a strong 10.5% gain, settling at $1.15 after a prolonged June decline toward the dangerous $1.00 mark.

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Since ETF balances are tightly tied to the market price of the coin, this price jump recalculated the sector's capitalization in favor of issuers and effectively saved a key institutional threshold from being lost in the eyes of major players.

Total XRP Spot ETF Net Inflow over the last 30 days, Source: SoSoValueThe breakdown of power among the funds as of July 7 looks as follows:

Bitwise (XRP): remains the largest player, with net assets returning to $330.84 million thanks to the price recovery and a local inflow of capital.Canary (XRPC): ranks second with $265.30 million.Franklin Templeton (XRPZ): confidently closes out the top three, accumulating $261.68 million. You Might Also Like

Real capital inflow, meanwhile, remained restrained. Over the reporting period, the funds collected a modest $17.19 million. Still, that was enough to extend the winning streak of inflows to nine consecutive weeks, bringing the cumulative figure since launch to $1.49 billion.

Large institutional investors are now clearly taking a wait-and-see position amid bureaucratic delays in Washington. The final vote on the CLARITY Act, which is expected to definitively establish XRP's status as a commodity, has shifted to late July or August 2026.

In this regulatory lull, the funds are simply holding their positions, while their return to billion-dollar status is entirely the achievement of XRP's revived spot price.

The XRP Ledger has moved closer to activating its xrpld v3.2.0 upgrade after more than 55% of trusted validators adopted the latest software version.

Summary

XRP Ledger validator adoption of xrpld v3.2.0 has climbed above 55%, moving the network closer to upgrade activation. The release introduces infrastructure updates, security fixes, and the official rename from rippled to xrpld. The fixCleanup3_2_0 amendment has 40% support, while developers continue monitoring validator migration issues. According to XRP Ledger Explorer data, 84 trusted validators, or 55.63% of the validator set, are now running xrpld v3.2.0. The latest software has also been installed on 353 network nodes, accounting for 42.12% of all nodes. By comparison, version 3.1.3 remains active on 58 validators, representing 38.41% of the validator set, and on 440 nodes, or 52.51% of the network.

XRP Ledger v3.2.0 adoption across validators and nodes | Source: XRPL Explorer On the XRP Ledger, trusted validators are responsible for approving protocol changes, while regular nodes follow the decisions made by the trusted validator list. Under the network’s governance rules, a protocol amendment requires support from more than 80% of trusted validators for two consecutive weeks before it can be activated.

Based on the current figures, roughly another quarter of the validator set must migrate to v3.2.0 before the upgrade can move toward activation.

Latest release introduces infrastructure and security changes Released as xrpld v3.2.0, the software package includes infrastructure updates, developer improvements, and bug fixes across the XRP Ledger. One of its most notable changes is the official renaming of the network’s main server software from rippled to xrpld, following the XLS-0095 proposal.

Beginning June 15, the upgrade changed configuration paths, server metadata, database directory locations, and version naming conventions. As a result, validator operators and node administrators are required to update deployment scripts and server configurations before completing the migration.

Alongside the software release, developers also introduced the fixCleanup3_2_0 amendment. According to the release documentation, the amendment contains security-related fixes covering Single Asset Vaults, the Lending Protocol, permissioned decentralized exchanges, Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs) and permissioned domains.

The proposal also adds new invariant checks designed to prevent deleted accounts from leaving residual ledger data, improving ledger consistency. In addition, the update allows developers and users to access XRP Ledger protocol information and server definitions without operating a full server, a change intended to simplify integrations for wallets, APIs, blockchain explorers and other automated services.

Amendment voting still has ground to cover Even as validator adoption of the software continues to climb, support for the attached fixCleanup3_2_0 amendment remains well below the activation threshold. Current network data shows the amendment has secured roughly 40% support, leaving it far short of the supermajority required for approval.

Ripple has publicly supported the amendment, helping strengthen confidence around the proposed changes. Separately, the XRP Ledger Lending Protocol recently passed an independent security audit, adding another layer of reassurance for the lending-related fixes included in the amendment.

At the same time, developers continue to monitor issues reported during validator migrations. A GitHub issue tracked under report #7581 describes a case where the service log displayed the correct new validator public key while the running server continued using the older public key stored in the wallet database.

The report attributes the discrepancy to validator migration behavior rather than the protocol itself, highlighting an operational issue that node operators may need to address as adoption of xrpld v3.2.0 continues to expand. 

The total value of real world assets (RWAs) tokenized on the Stellar network has surpassed 3 billion dollars, according to the latest figures released by the RWA Foundation. This new milestone not only highlights the rising institutional interest but also points to increased on-chain adoption of the Stellar blockchain in bringing traditional assets to digital platforms.

A new threshold in institutional adoptionCrossing the 3 billion dollar threshold marks one of Stellar’s most significant breakthroughs to date. Data shows that this figure covers both the value of assets actively distributed on-chain and those represented digitally. The surge reflects a sharp acceleration in the tokenization of traditional financial products on Stellar, reinforcing the platform’s appeal as a blockchain of choice for major players seeking to digitize real-world assets.

Stellar, often compared to XRP Ledger, has carved out a strategic position by focusing on payment infrastructure, asset issuance, and tokenization. This technical direction has made Stellar a favored network for financial institutions aiming to bridge conventional assets with blockchain innovations. The growth is further supported by the Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit committed to advancing the platform’s capabilities globally.

Data from the RWA Foundation revealed that the value of on-chain real world assets on the Stellar network has breached the 3 billion dollar mark, representing a pivotal moment in the ecosystem’s evolution.

Rising to the top in tokenized investment strategiesStellar’s boom isn’t limited to overall RWA value. The network now holds the top spot in the category of value distributed in tokenized active investment strategies, reaching 620 million dollars. This reflects not only asset representation but a growing adoption of digital investment vehicles on the Stellar blockchain.

Setting itself apart from the competition, Stellar’s distributed value in this space outpaces leading rivals. Ethereum, for instance, claims second place with 342.9 million dollars, while Mantle and Avalanche lag behind at 113 million and 108.6 million dollars, respectively. These figures underscore Stellar’s growing clout among both institutional and retail investors seeking blockchain-based investment products.

NetworkDistributed ValueStellar620 million dollarsEthereum342.9 million dollarsMantle113 million dollarsAvalanche108.6 million dollarsStellar pulls ahead of Ethereum and SolanaThe ranking continues with Polygon at 82.3 million dollars, Arbitrum at 70.8 million, Monad at 61.3 million, Base at 40.4 million, and Plume Network at 36.9 million dollars. Solana trails with only 26.7 million dollars in distributed value, occupying a lower position on the list.

This landscape reveals that Stellar has overtaken even larger ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana specifically within the sphere of tokenized investment products. The platform’s recent gains signal a changing dynamic in the pursuit to bring real world assets into the blockchain space, intensifying the competition among major networks.

Stellar has surged ahead of rival networks in tokenized active investment strategies, boasting a distributed value of 620 million dollars.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

XRP traded near $1.13 on July 7, down 1.69% in the past 24 hours, according to crypto.news market data. 

Summary

XRP’s rebound needs a clear break above $1.14 to confirm stronger short-term momentum for bulls. ETF inflows remain positive, but CLARITY delays have removed a near-term policy catalyst for XRP. Spot CVD has improved across exchanges while Binance perpetual traders keep selling into rebounds. The token moved between $1.11 and $1.16 during the session, while trading volume stood at about $1.73 billion.

The rebound from the late-June low near $1.00 remains intact, but buyers have not yet turned it into a stronger breakout. the token pushed back toward the $1.14 to $1.18 zone, but it failed to hold the upper part of that range.

The price now sits near a short-term decision area. A close above $1.14 would show that buyers are gaining control. A clean move above $1.18 to $1.20 would give bulls a stronger signal and place the next resistance levels back in focus.

The downside level is also clear. If XRP loses $1.10, the current rebound would weaken. A move below that area could expose $1.06, which some traders now see as the next retest zone.

XRP ETF inflows help, but policy catalyst slips The recovery has come while XRP-linked investment products continue to attract demand. The latest background data showed spot XRP ETFs recorded a ninth straight week of net inflows, adding $17.19 million despite broader policy uncertainty.

Those inflows have helped support the market, but they have not been enough to break the larger downtrend. As previously reported, XRP ETFs gave investors regulated access, but they did not solve the wider legal question around XRP’s status under U.S. law.

The CLARITY Act remains the main policy catalyst for many traders. The bill missed its July 4 target and now faces an Aug. 7 deadline before the Senate’s summer break.

That delay removed a near-term trigger for digital assets. The bill has passed the House, cleared the Senate Banking Committee, and sits on the Senate calendar, but staff still need to merge Banking and Agriculture versions before a full Senate vote.

Moreover, Standard Chartered has said XRP ETFs could attract $4 billion to $8 billion in first-year inflows if CLARITY passes. That forecast depends on legal clarity unlocking larger institutional demand.

Technical setup stays mixed The XRP/USDT daily chart shows price recovering from the late-June low, but the broader trend remains weak after the June breakdown. The token is trading above the middle Bollinger Band near $1.10, which keeps the short-term rebound alive.

The upper Bollinger Band sits near $1.18. That matches the area traders are watching for a stronger breakout. Until the token closes above that zone, the move remains a rebound inside a weak structure rather than a confirmed trend shift.

XRP price chart, source: crypto.news The lower Bollinger Band sits near $1.01. That level remains important if selling pressure returns. A break below $1.10 would increase the risk of a move back toward that area.

Momentum also shows a mixed picture. The Stochastic RSI is elevated, with readings near 88.63 and 95.08. That shows strong short-term momentum, but it also places XRP close to overbought territory. Since the faster line has moved below the slower line, the rebound may be losing some force.

EGRAG Crypto said XRP must defend $1.10 after moving below the 21 EMA on the four-hour chart. He said, “Hold $1.10 = structure still alive,” while a loss of $1.06 would increase caution.

#XRP – The Retest That Matters 👀 – Short-Term ( 4H TF): #XRP is now at the real short-term test.

📒Note: We broke below the 21 EMA, and you all know the 21 EMA is my momentum gauge across timeframes.

📒Note: But the structure is not dead yet. Why? Because #XRP is now wicking… pic.twitter.com/8T7pBTbQHE

— EGRAG CRYPTO (@egragcrypto) July 6, 2026 Dark Defender took a more bullish weekly view and said XRP is “launching the Wave 5 without the Clarity Act.” Other analysts also pointed to higher long-term targets, but those views still depend on price clearing the current resistance zone first.

Spot demand rises while perps stay defensive On-chain and derivatives data show a split market. CryptoQuant analyst Amr Taha said XRP’s estimated spot CVD across centralized exchanges rose from about minus $42 million on May 12 to plus $406 million by July 7.

That change points to stronger spot buying across exchanges. It suggests market buyers have absorbed more available XRP supply over the past two months.

The derivatives market shows the opposite trend. Binance perpetual CVD fell from about minus $48 million to minus $783 million over the same period. That shows sustained sell-side pressure from perpetual traders.

Open interest also fell from about $255 million on May 22 to $203 million on July 7. That drop suggests leveraged traders have reduced exposure while spot buyers have become more active.

Binance spot data has improved, but it has not turned positive. Estimated spot CVD on Binance rose from about minus $212 million on June 25 to minus $173 million on July 7, showing that selling pressure has eased but not fully reversed.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

On the first day of every month, one billion XRP leaves a set of locked contracts on the XRP Ledger, and every month traders argue about what it means. Here is the full machinery: why the escrow was created, how the ledger enforces it, where the released tokens actually go, and how to read the unlock without being fooled by the headline number.

At around 07:30 UTC on July 1, 2026, on-chain trackers flagged three transfers on the XRP Ledger: 200 million XRP, then 300 million, then 500 million, exactly one billion tokens worth roughly $1.04 billion at the time. Nobody at Ripple pressed a button that morning. The release was executed by the ledger itself, under contracts written in December 2017, on a schedule that has repeated on the first of the month for years.

The event has become a monthly ritual. Whale Alert posts the transfers, headlines announce that a billion dollars of XRP has been unlocked, newer holders panic, and veterans point out that most of the tokens will be locked right back up within days. Both camps are reacting to the same mechanism, and most people in both camps could not explain how it actually works: what an escrow is at the ledger level, why Ripple built one, how much XRP truly enters circulation each month, or how long the whole arrangement can continue.

The escrow also sits at the center of XRP’s sharpest ongoing argument. When Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse attacked Strategy’s Bitcoin financing in late June, saying financial engineering does not drive long-term value, critics immediately pointed at the escrow: Ripple funds itself, in part, by selling tokens from this very system every month. Understanding the mechanism is now a prerequisite for understanding the debate.

This guide covers the escrow end to end: the 2017 problem it was built to solve, the transaction types that enforce it, the monthly release and relock cycle, the destinations of the sold tokens, the supply math, the price question, the criticism, and how to track all of it yourself.

The problem the escrow was built to solve When the XRP Ledger launched in 2012, all 100 billion XRP that will ever exist were created at once. There is no mining and no staking issuance; the full supply existed on day one. The founders gifted the majority of it to the company that became Ripple, which used sales of the token to fund operations, partnerships, and ecosystem development.

That arrangement created a permanent shadow over the market. Through 2017, Ripple still held more than half of all XRP in ordinary accounts it could spend at will. Every rally ran into the same objection: nothing stopped the company from selling tens of billions of tokens into strength whenever it chose. The overhang was not hypothetical selling; it was the unlimited possibility of selling, which no buyer could price.

Ripple’s answer, announced in mid-2017 and executed that December, was to lock 55 billion XRP, then worth a dominant share of its holdings, into a chain of escrow contracts enforced by the ledger itself. The contracts were structured as 55 monthly tranches of one billion XRP each, releasing on the first day of each month. Whatever the company did not use in a given month would be returned to new escrows queued at the back of the line.

The design converted an open-ended threat into a bounded, published schedule. After December 2017, the maximum amount of new XRP that Ripple could bring into circulation in any month was one billion tokens, and everyone could verify the limit on-chain. The company gave up flexibility to buy credibility, the same trade a central bank makes when it publishes a policy rule, or a startup makes when it puts founder shares behind a vesting cliff.

It is worth being precise about what the escrow did not do. It did not reduce Ripple’s holdings by a single token, and it did not promise that the company would stop selling. It capped the pace. The distinction between locked supply and destroyed supply still drives confusion today, and it is the root of most bad takes about the monthly unlock.

What an escrow is on the XRP Ledger The escrow is not a legal agreement or a corporate pledge. It is a native feature of the XRP Ledger protocol, which means the lockup is enforced by the same consensus rules that validate every payment on the network. Ripple could not release the tokens early even if it wanted to, short of convincing the validator network to change the protocol itself.

Three transaction types run the system. EscrowCreate locks an amount of XRP into a ledger entry with a source account, a destination account, and release conditions. EscrowFinish delivers the locked XRP to the destination once the conditions are met. EscrowCancel returns the XRP to the source if the escrow expires unfinished. The conditions can include a time before which the escrow cannot be finished, a time before which it cannot be cancelled, and optionally a cryptographic condition that must be satisfied for release.

Ripple’s supply escrows use the time lock: each tranche simply cannot be finished before the first day of its assigned month. Once that date passes, an EscrowFinish transaction moves the billion tokens to Ripple’s operational accounts, which is what the trackers flag every month. The tranches often arrive in pieces, like July’s 200, 300, and 500 million splits, because the original escrows were created as multiple entries.

The receiving accounts are secured with the ledger’s native multisignature scheme, which requires several keys to authorize spending and lets individual signers rotate credentials without moving the funds. That matters because a system holding tens of billions of dollars in value would otherwise be a single point of catastrophic failure.

Escrow was not built only for Ripple’s treasury. The feature was designed for conditional payments and cross-ledger settlement through the Interledger Protocol, and the same primitive now underpins more ambitious plumbing on the network, part of the same toolkit that is turning the ledger into a venue for institutional finance. Ripple’s supply schedule is simply the largest and most famous use of a general-purpose tool.

The monthly cycle: release, spend, relock The headline event, one billion XRP unlocked, is only the first step of a three-part cycle, and it is the least informative one.

Step one is the release. On the first of the month, the time lock on that month’s tranches expires and the tokens move to Ripple’s accounts. This is the moment Whale Alert broadcasts and headlines report. At July 2026 prices the billion tokens were worth about $1.04 billion; at the 2018 peak the same monthly release was worth more than three billion dollars. The dollar figure changes, the token count does not.

Step two is allocation. Ripple decides how much of the billion it actually needs for the month: sales to institutional partners, liquidity for payment corridors, ecosystem investments, and operating expenses. Historically this has been a minority of the release.

Step three is the relock. Within hours to days, Ripple returns the unused majority, typically 600 to 800 million tokens and in some months more, to fresh escrow contracts queued behind the existing schedule. In December 2025, for example, roughly 70 percent of the unlocked tokens went straight back into escrow. The relock transactions are just as public as the release, and experienced observers watch them far more closely than the unlock itself, because the difference between the two numbers is the only figure that matters.

That difference, the net release, has generally run between 200 and 300 million XRP per month across recent cycles. At current prices that is in the range of 200 to 350 million dollars of potential monthly supply, some of which goes to buyers who never touch an exchange. Back-of-envelope, a net release at that pace adds roughly four to six percent to circulating supply per year, a real but bounded inflation rate that the market can model years in advance.

The relock mechanics also explain why the escrow has lasted far beyond its original 55 months. Every returned token extends the queue, so the schedule keeps rolling forward. What was designed as a 55-month runway has become a self-extending conveyor that is still running nearly a decade later.

Where the released XRP actually goes The tokens Ripple keeps each month flow into a handful of destinations, and the mix has shifted with the company’s strategy and its legal history.

The most consequential category is institutional sales. Ripple sells XRP directly to financial institutions and market makers, historically to seed liquidity for its cross-border payment product, where XRP serves as a bridge asset between currencies. These direct sales were the exact activity at issue in the SEC lawsuit: the 2023 ruling found that Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP were unregistered securities offerings, while sales on exchanges to the public were not. The escrow itself was never the legal problem, but it is the reservoir those institutional sales draw from.

The second category is ecosystem funding. Grants to XRP Ledger developers, investments in companies building on the network, regional funds, and partnership incentives are routinely denominated in XRP. The company’s broader 2026 strategy, spanning payments, custody, stablecoins, and its role in projects like the Open USD consortium alongside RLUSD, is financed by a treasury in which escrowed XRP remains the largest asset.

The third category is ordinary corporate operations. Salaries, acquisitions, legal bills, and expansion are paid, directly or indirectly, from the same pool. Ripple has spent heavily on acquisitions in custody and prime brokerage, and token sales remain a funding source a conventional company would have to replace with equity or debt.

One thing Ripple does not do with the escrow is buy XRP back. The company runs buyback programs for its own private shares, not for the token. Community proposals to burn the remaining escrowed supply surface regularly, and Ripple has declined them; chief technology officer emeritus David Schwartz has publicly dismissed the idea that a burn would guarantee a lasting price rally.

The honest framing is that the escrow is a corporate treasury with a public spending speed limit. The tokens fund a company, and the schedule tells the market exactly how fast the funding can flow.

The supply math in 2026 The numbers as of mid-2026 look like this. Total XRP supply stands just below 100 billion, at roughly 99.99 billion, because transaction fees on the ledger are permanently destroyed; about 14 million XRP have been burned since 2012, a rounding error against total supply. Circulating supply is around 62 billion tokens. Ripple’s remaining escrowed stash is estimated near 38 billion XRP, with additional tokens held in its operational accounts.

Divide the escrow by the net release rate and you get the question every long-term holder eventually asks: when does it run out? At 200 to 300 million net tokens per month, current estimates put depletion roughly nine years out if present patterns hold. Schwartz has pushed back on attempts to name an exact year, arguing that no date can be pinned down because depletion depends entirely on how much of each monthly billion the company keeps versus relocks, which in turn depends on operational needs that nobody can forecast a decade ahead.

Both sides of that exchange are correct. The mechanical arithmetic gives a horizon in the mid-2030s; the caveat is that the divisor is a management decision renewed every month. A bull market that lets Ripple fund itself with fewer tokens stretches the runway. A spending surge shortens it. The escrow bounds the maximum pace at twelve billion tokens per year, but the actual pace floats.

The end state is worth thinking about now, because it inverts today’s dynamic. Every month the escrow shrinks, Ripple’s future maximum sell pressure shrinks with it, and the day the last tranche releases, the overhang that the escrow was built to manage is simply gone. Whether that is bullish supply exhaustion or the loss of a disciplined funding machine that kept the company honest is one of the more interesting open questions in XRP’s long-term story, and it gets one month closer on the first of every month.

Does the unlock move the price? The evidence for a reliable unlock effect is thin, and the reason is the schedule’s whole point: an event that everyone can see coming years in advance is an event the market can price in advance.

The release date never surprises anyone. The token amount never surprises anyone. The only genuine information in the monthly cycle is the relock figure, which reveals how much Ripple kept, and even that varies within a well-known band. Short-term traders do report a pattern of mild pressure and elevated volume around the first of the month, a one to three percent wobble is commonly cited, but disentangling that from ordinary volatility in an asset that moves five percent on quiet days is close to impossible.

The July 2026 unlock is a useful case study. The billion tokens released on July 1 landed in a market where XRP had just closed its worst month in recent memory, down nearly 20 percent in June to a 19-month low near $1.01, before recovering to trade around $1.04. Headlines framed the unlock as another weight on a drowning asset. Yet the same week, spot XRP ETFs in the United States were extending a multi-week streak of net inflows even as Bitcoin funds bled, meaning regulated institutional demand was absorbing supply while the escrow released it. The unlock was the loudest supply story and close to the least informative one.

The deeper lesson is the same one that applies to reading ETF creation and redemption data: headline gross numbers mislead, and net figures matter. A billion unlocked is a gross number. Six to eight hundred million relocked is the offset. Two to three hundred million net, sold gradually, partly off-exchange, into a market that trades more than a billion dollars of XRP daily, is the real supply event, and it is modest.

None of that makes the unlock irrelevant. It makes it a scheduled, bounded, transparent form of sell pressure, which is precisely what it was designed to be.

The criticism: a company-shaped hole in a decentralized asset The escrow solves the dumping problem and creates a philosophical one. XRP is the only major cryptocurrency whose monthly supply expansion is decided in a corporate treasury meeting, and critics have never let the point go.

The centralization objection is straightforward. Bitcoin’s issuance is set by an algorithm no company controls. XRP’s effective issuance is set by Ripple’s monthly relock decision. The schedule is transparent and capped, but it is still one firm’s choice, and holders are structurally downstream of that firm’s funding needs. For skeptics, that makes XRP less a decentralized asset and more a corporate instrument with a public float.

The sell-pressure objection got fresh oxygen in June 2026, when Garlinghouse attacked Strategy’s model of issuing preferred stock to buy Bitcoin, calling the slide in its preferred shares a damning indictment and insisting that utility, not financial engineering, drives long-term value. Traders pounced on the symmetry: Ripple funds itself by selling a token it created, from an escrow it controls, into the market it champions. One widely shared critique called the two firms two giants with the same model, each leaning on the asset it defends. The comparison is not perfect, Ripple sells an asset it was granted at genesis while Strategy borrows against one it bought, but the shared feature is real: both companies are structural sellers or leveraged holders of the asset their shareholders and communities want to rise.

There is also a subtler critique: the escrow’s existence proves the concern it was built to address. Companies with no power to crash their own asset do not need to lock 55 billion tokens to reassure anyone. The escrow is both the remedy and the permanent reminder of XRP’s concentrated origins.

Defenders answer that every funding model leans on something, that a published on-chain speed limit is more honest than the opaque treasury sales common across crypto, and that a decade of relock discipline is a track record, not a promise. Both readings fit the same facts, which is why the argument never ends.

How XRP’s schedule compares with other supply systems Placing the escrow next to other issuance mechanisms clarifies what is genuinely unusual about it.

Bitcoin’s supply comes from mining rewards on a halving schedule fixed in the protocol. No entity decides anything; the only discretionary sellers are miners, and when their economics break, the result is the kind of forced miner selling that hit records in early 2026. Bitcoin’s sell pressure is distributed across an industry; XRP’s scheduled component is concentrated in one company but capped by contract.

Ethereum mints new ETH as staking rewards and burns a portion of fees, so net issuance floats with network activity around a low rate. Again, no single seller dominates, and no schedule exists to publish.

The closest relatives to Ripple’s escrow are found in token projects, not commodity-style chains. Foundation treasuries, investor unlock cliffs, and team vesting schedules all release supply on calendars, and unlock-tracking has become a trading discipline of its own. XRP’s version differs in three ways: it is enforced by the base protocol instead of a smart contract or a legal agreement, it has run without a missed or altered month since 2017, and it is refilled by relocking, which makes it self-extending instead of finite by design.

The comparison cuts both ways. Against venture-backed tokens with cliff unlocks that dump double-digit percentages of supply in a day, XRP’s smooth billion-per-month drip with a 70 percent refund rate is conservative. Against Bitcoin’s zero-discretion issuance, it is corporate management. Where an investor lands depends on which reference class they reach for, and both are legitimate.

Tracking the escrow yourself Everything described above is public, and verifying it takes minutes.

The release transactions appear on any XRP Ledger explorer on the first of each month, flagged by monitoring services like Whale Alert within moments. Explorers such as Bithomp and XRPScan label Ripple’s known accounts, so the escrow finishes and the subsequent movements are easy to follow without any special tooling.

The relock is the transaction that deserves the attention. Within roughly 24 to 72 hours of the release, look for large EscrowCreate transactions from Ripple’s accounts returning tokens to new time locks. Subtract that figure from one billion and you have the month’s true net release, the only number in the cycle with information in it. A month where Ripple relocks 850 million reads very differently from a month where it relocks 550 million, and the difference never makes headlines.

Ripple also publishes quarterly reports summarizing its XRP sales and holdings, which provide the company’s own accounting of what the on-chain data shows. Third-party dashboards aggregate escrow balances and project depletion timelines; treat the projections as arithmetic, not prophecy, for the reasons Schwartz gave.

A practical checklist for reading any unlock month: confirm the gross release, wait for the relock, compute the net, compare it with the trailing average of 200 to 300 million, and check whether demand-side flows, exchange volumes, and, since late 2025, ETF creations look adequate to absorb it. If the net is in the normal band, the unlock told you nothing new. If it deviates sharply, that is a real signal about Ripple’s cash needs, and it will be visible on-chain before anyone writes it up.

Frequently asked questions What is the XRP escrow? The XRP escrow is a set of time-locked contracts on the XRP Ledger holding tokens that belong to Ripple. Created in December 2017 with 55 billion XRP, the contracts release a maximum of one billion tokens on the first day of each month, and the ledger protocol itself enforces the lock.

How much XRP is unlocked each month? The contracts release up to one billion XRP monthly, usually in several tranches on the first of the month. Ripple typically returns 600 to 800 million of those tokens to new escrow contracts within days, so the net amount entering circulation has generally been 200 to 300 million XRP per month.

Why did Ripple lock its XRP in escrow? Before 2017, Ripple held tens of billions of XRP in spendable accounts, and the market feared the company could sell unlimited amounts at any time. Locking 55 billion tokens behind a published monthly schedule capped the maximum pace of sales and made the limit verifiable on-chain.

Does the monthly unlock crash the XRP price? There is little evidence of a consistent price effect. The schedule is known years in advance, most unlocked tokens are relocked, and the net release is small relative to daily trading volume. Short-term volatility around the date exists but is hard to separate from XRP’s normal price swings.

How much XRP is left in escrow? As of mid-2026, estimates place the remaining escrowed balance near 38 billion XRP. The figure declines by whatever Ripple keeps each month and is publicly visible on XRP Ledger explorers that track the company’s escrow accounts.

When will the XRP escrow run out? At recent net release rates, projections cluster around nine more years, but no exact date is possible. Depletion depends on how much of each monthly billion Ripple relocks, a decision the company makes month by month based on its operational needs.

Can Ripple unlock the escrowed XRP early? No. The time locks are enforced by the XRP Ledger protocol, not by a company policy. An escrow cannot be finished before its release date under the network’s consensus rules, so early access would require a protocol change accepted by the validator network.

What happens to unlocked XRP that Ripple does not use? Unused tokens are placed into new escrow contracts queued at the back of the schedule, a step visible on-chain as EscrowCreate transactions in the days after each release. This relocking is why the escrow has lasted far beyond its original 55-month design.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 6, 2026.

The Evernorth trademark has been publicly recorded in the Cayman Islands, marking another milestone in the development of the Ripple-backed XRP Digital Asset Treasury (DAT).

Based on a recent update, the trademark filing was handled by HSM IP Ltd., a Cayman-based intellectual property firm that frequently manages trademark registrations for companies operating in the jurisdiction. 

Evernorth Registers Trademark in Cayman Islands Evernorth Trademark Covers Digital Asset Financial Services According to the Cayman Islands Gazette, the Evernorth word mark (No. T0004840) has been registered under Classes 36 and 42, covering a wide range of digital asset-related financial and technology services.

Under Class 36, the trademark protects services related to digital asset portfolio creation and management, financial advisory and consulting for digital assets, digital asset treasury management, financial custody solutions, and investment strategy information for publicly traded investment funds.

Meanwhile, Class 42 focuses on the technological infrastructure supporting these offerings. Specifically, it includes software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms for blockchain validation, digital asset portfolio management software, electronic payment processing, authentication software, digital asset storage, and electronic data storage solutions.

Notably, the trademark registration remains valid until April 1, 2036, giving Evernorth nearly a decade of legal protection for its brand and related services.

Why the Cayman Islands Matter for the XRP DAT The Cayman Islands registration aligns with Evernorth’s broader corporate structure and long-term strategy. The XRP Digital Asset Treasury is currently pursuing a business combination with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, a Cayman-domiciled Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).

Establishing the trademark in the Cayman Islands complements this structure, as the jurisdiction is widely used by global investment vehicles due to its tax neutrality, asset protection framework, and efficient intellectual property and global licensing regime.

Consequently, the trademark filing strengthens the legal foundation for Evernorth’s institutional XRP treasury initiative as the company moves closer to becoming a publicly traded entity.

Evernorth Expands Institutional XRP Strategy Beyond securing its intellectual property, Evernorth continues to expand its institutional XRP strategy. The company already holds approximately 473 million XRP, making it one of the largest corporate holders of the cryptocurrency.

Rather than operating as a passive investment vehicle, Evernorth plans to actively grow its XRP reserves. Its strategy includes institutional lending, liquidity provisioning, and participation in decentralized finance (DeFi) yield opportunities to generate additional returns on its holdings.

At the same time, Evernorth is advancing its public listing plans. The company has submitted multiple amendments to its S-4 registration filings as it seeks a Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN, which would provide institutional investors with regulated exposure to XRP.

Additionally, Evernorth has strengthened its leadership team by appointing four new board members, including Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty, further reinforcing its ties to the XRP ecosystem and its long-term institutional ambitions.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

Ripple today announced it has received authorization of its Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF).

This follows the preliminary approval announced in June 2026 and confirms Ripple as fully MiCA-compliant, with its crypto payments solution now available to financial institutions, corporations, and companies in all 30 European Economic Area nations.

The CASP license, when combined with Ripple's existing EU Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence, will allow European banks, fintechs, and corporations to access Ripple's entire cryptoasset and stablecoin payments infrastructure, enabling them to collect, exchange, and pay out through a single integration for the first time.

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Ripple UK CEO Cassie Craddock celebrated the milestone in an X post. "We're fully licensed in Europe and excited to keep building on the incredible momentum of recent months. Let's go," Craddock wrote.

We're fully licensed in Europe and excited to keep building on the incredible momentum of recent months. Let's go!🚀 https://t.co/LVKKKgpKVX

— Cassie Craddock (@CraddockCJ) July 6, 2026 The executive noted a demand among the institutions Ripple works with across Europe to build their digital asset services alongside regulated partners, and the company is now licensed and ready to meet that demand.

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Alongside its EU EMI license, Ripple's CASP approval places it among the few digital asset providers with full MiCA authorization, adding to a global portfolio of over 75 regulatory licenses.

XRP, RLUSD set to benefitThe RLUSD stablecoin and XRP underpin Ripple's solutions, which span global payments, custody, liquidity, and treasury management.

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The CASP license approval will let Ripple expand its cryptoasset services to financial institutions and businesses across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area. As a result, the RLUSD stablecoin and XRP are set to benefit immensely.

The license also positions Ripple to delve into broader crypto-asset activities in Europe as it continues to meet rising European demand for digital asset services and infrastructure. Europe is already a key market for Ripple's products, with some of the world's major financial institutions among its customers.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the United States recorded $526.64 million in net outflows between June 29 and July 2. With this latest development, the streak of withdrawals from these products has now reached its eighth consecutive week. This marks the longest continuous weekly outflow period seen since spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the US.

Outflows continue in Bitcoin and Ethereum fundsThe cautious approach from institutional investors, combined with weaker momentum in Bitcoin, was clearly reflected in ETF data. According to SoSoValue, the total net assets of US spot Bitcoin ETFs fell to around $74.37 billion. In the same period, Bitcoin traded near $61,500. During June alone, outflows from these products totaled approximately $4.5 billion, underlining the sustained pressure in the market.

Wu Blockchain reported that US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw nearly $527 million in net outflows over the period from June 29 to July 2, bringing the outflow streak to eight consecutive weeks.

Spot Ethereum ETFs mirrored this trend. In the same timeframe, Ethereum ETFs experienced $13.67 million in net redemptions, also marking their eighth straight week of outflows. The simultaneous withdrawals from funds tied to the two largest digital assets signal that investor appetite for risk remains subdued across the sector.

Diverging trends in altcoin ETFsWhile Bitcoin and Ethereum products continued to lose assets, certain altcoin ETFs bucked the trend by attracting fresh capital. Spot Solana ETFs posted $5.75 million in net inflows for the week. XRP ETFs stood out with $17.19 million in new investments, representing the strongest performance in the altcoin ETF category. Hyperliquid ETFs also saw positive flows, gaining $4.32 million in net inflows despite a noticeable slowdown compared to previous weeks.

Glossary: SoSoValue is a data platform commonly used to track ETF flows and market metrics in digital asset markets. Net inflow refers to the difference between money entering and exiting a fund.

This divergence suggests that, rather than exiting the crypto ETF market entirely, some investors are reallocating capital toward alternative digital assets. Although Bitcoin remains the predominant option among institutional vehicles, select interest in altcoin-based products appears to be holding steady.

Brief signs of recovery prove short-livedDespite a weak weekly outlook, there were limited signs of recovery at the period’s close. On July 2, US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted over $221 million in daily net inflows, breaking a 10-day outflow streak. However, this single-day shift was not deemed sufficient to reverse the broader eight-week trend.

Market observers attribute the prolonged outflows to macroeconomic uncertainty, rising interest rate expectations, and diminished risk appetite. With pressure persisting on Bitcoin, it appears institutional investors continue to scale back their exposure by redeeming ETF shares.

In the period ahead, ETF flows are expected to serve as a key gauge of institutional sentiment. Sustained net inflows could suggest renewed confidence in Bitcoin, while ongoing outflows may indicate demand will remain muted until broader market conditions improve.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

Travel platform Travala announced in a post on X that users can now book over 2.2 million hotels globally using XRP, in what it called a significant stride in crypto's adoption in everyday payments.

In a statement, Travala reiterated the original design intent of XRP as it was "built to move value fast," making its use for hotel bookings in line with that vision. The travel platform said users can now secure hotel bookings with instant confirmation and without the involvement of banks.

This development means XRP holders can pay for accommodation across a global hotel network, expanding XRP's use case into one of the largest consumer industries: travel and hospitality. As a result, users will be able to book over 3 million travel products globally with XRP on Travala.

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This new real-world payment integration highlights XRP's growing use case beyond trading markets.

XRP utility expands with paymentsIn a major milestone reached early this year, the x402 facilitator went live on the XRP Ledger in February, allowing AI agents to pay for services using XRP and RLUSD with no need for API keys or accounts.

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Agents can pay per request via x402, with volume settling on the XRP Ledger. Fast forward to the present, nearly a million agent transactions have settled through the XRPL x402 facilitator, implying more agents, merchants, and volume are entering the XRP Ledger.

Ripple is expanding XRP and RLUSD utility for AI-agent payments, having introduced the XRPL AI Starter Kit in June — a set of developer tools for building AI agents that can send payments on the XRP Ledger.

As AI agents begin transacting on behalf of businesses, Ripple has joined the ecosystem supporting Mastercard's Agent Pay for Machines initiative, helping validate new use cases, establish common rules, and accelerate adoption while continuing to build the infrastructure for trusted agent-driven payments, with the XRP Ledger and RLUSD laying the foundation for the future of commerce.

Nine Consecutive Weeks of Net InflowsUS spot $XRP ETFs have logged another week of positive flows, absorbing $17.19M in net inflows over the period according to SoSoValue data cited by @BSCNews. The result extends the streak to nine consecutive weeks of net inflows, a run that has played out even as the broader token price has faced headwinds.

Notably, the weekly total held up despite two individual days of net outflows within the same period, pointing to resilient baseline demand from investors using the ETF wrapper to gain exposure to $XRP.

Context: A Persistent Inflow Trend XRP spot ETFs have drawn net inflows for several straight weeks, pushing the cumulative total past $1.47 billion since their November 2025 launch. The products launched to strong early demand, and the inflow run has continued even through periods of price weakness for the underlying token.

Spot XRP ETFs absorbed net inflows for consecutive weeks while the token fell, which is the opposite of the reflexive "price up, flows up" loop that usually drives these products. Consecutive weekly inflows during a price drawdown point to accumulation rather than momentum chasing, since allocators are adding on weakness instead of buying strength.

The five US-listed spot XRP ETFs have seen Franklin Templeton's XRPZ, Bitwise's XRP, and Grayscale's GXRP among the leading contributors to inflows in recent weeks, according to SoSoValue data. Retail investors account for 84% of XRP ETF inflows, while larger institutional capital remains a key variable to watch.

The latest weekly figure of $17.19M is modest relative to the peak weeks earlier in 2026. XRP ETFs posted a 2026 weekly record of $60.5 million in inflows during the week ending May 15, even as Bitcoin and Ethereum saw significant outflows in the same period. The current pace is more measured, but the unbroken streak of positive weekly flows remains the headline for the asset class.

Sources:
XRP's ETF Inflow Streak: 24/7 Wall St.
Spot XRP ETFs Attract Biggest Inflows Since January: CoinDesk
Will XRP Break Its Downtrend in July 2026: Phemex

Charles Hoskinson believes the network’s Ouroboros Leios upgrade will increase transaction capacity, positioning Cardano alongside some of the industry’s fastest blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Hoskinson made the assertion during a virtual interview with David Gokhshtein on The Breakdown podcast. During the discussion, he revealed that Leios technology could boost Cardano’s throughput by as much as 60 times its current capacity.

“Leios will be 60x in terms of throughput inside the system,” he said, highlighting the upgrade’s potential to significantly increase the number of transactions Cardano can process per second. 

If Cardano reaches that level, Hoskinson believes the network will “be as performant as the XRP Ledger (XRPL).” 

Cardano Aims to Match XRPL’s Speed and Efficiency For years, the XRPL has built its reputation on fast settlement times and high transaction throughput, making it a preferred option for payments and cross-border transfers.

The network typically settles transactions within three to five seconds and supports a throughput of up to 1,500 TPS. Notably, the blockchain surpassed 120 TPS in March 2026 while processing around 650 transactions during peak activity.

Against this backdrop, Hoskinson’s latest remarks suggest that Cardano no longer views transaction speed as a competitive disadvantage. Instead, he believes the introduction of Leios will place the network on par with leading blockchain platforms in terms of performance and scalability.

Preserving Decentralization and Security Notably, Hoskinson stressed that Cardano achieved these throughput gains without sacrificing its core principles, particularly decentralization and security.

The blockchain industry has long struggled to balance scalability, decentralization, and security, a challenge commonly known as the blockchain trilemma. Many networks improve performance only by compromising one of the other two elements.

However, Cardano aims to prove that such trade-offs are not inevitable. With Leios, Cardano hopes to deliver the speed required for mainstream adoption while preserving the principles that have guided the ecosystem since its inception. 

Current Status of Leios  Meanwhile, the Ouroboros Leios upgrade officially launched its public testnet on June 23, 2026. Named Musashi Dojo, the testnet represents the first time the protocol has operated in a live network environment.

Looking ahead, Cardano plans to deploy Leios on the mainnet later this year, marking what could become one of the network’s most significant scalability upgrades to date.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

https://www.amazon.com/QUARPIMER-Ripple-Cryptocurrency-Collectors-Protective/dp/B094G1WTRV

Ripple has unveiled plans to integrate agentic AI payments into the XRP blockchain, marking a significant technological advancement. The integration will occur through the new XRPL AI Starter Kit, enabling autonomous AI agents to utilize XRP and the RLUSD stablecoin for various digital transactions. This development positions XRP to play a pivotal role in machine-to-machine commerce, with RLUSD offering a stable settlement option. Ripple’s initiative aligns with its broader strategy to enhance agentic systems and strengthen security controls, evidenced by its recent strategic hires and the launch of an AI-driven operations platform.

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Key Takeaways Recent developments suggest Ripple’s integration of agentic AI payments could enhance XRP’s utility in machine-to-machine commerce. Market pricing indicates a modest increase in optimism, with the probability of XRP reaching $1.60 in July rising from 4% to 6%. Current activity levels in XRP markets suggest participants are closely monitoring potential impacts on adoption and price movement. What to Watch Market participants will be watching for further announcements from Ripple and its partners that could influence XRP’s adoption. Key indicators to monitor include regulatory developments such as the CLARITY Act and potential market catalysts like an XRP ETF announcement. Continued shifts in market odds may indicate how participants are interpreting the impact of these developments on XRP’s price trajectory.

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Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 1 2026 0.6% — — View market → August 1 2026 6% — — View market →

The XRP Ledger is carving out a more prominent role within Brazil’s rapidly expanding stablecoin ecosystem. According to crypto researcher SMQKE, the blockchain network has become a key platform, especially for issuing and transferring digital assets pegged to the Brazilian real (BRL). The number of BRL-backed stablecoins in circulation across Brazil has now surpassed 10, with these assets serving both retail users and institutional players in the country’s dynamic fintech sector.

BRL stablecoin adoption rises in BrazilProjects such as BRZ, BRLA, and BRLM are driving the growth of digital payment channels, enabling faster and cheaper cross-border money transfers and fueling the rise of tokenized finance applications. This trend underscores Brazil’s emergence as one of Latin America’s most vibrant fintech markets and highlights the growing appetite for digital assets among consumers and businesses.

SMQKE notes that several of these BRL-pegged stablecoins are leveraging the XRP Ledger infrastructure. The network’s ability to process transactions within seconds and at low cost stands out as a major draw for high-volume stablecoin issuers operating in the Brazilian market.

SMQKE emphasizes that with a portion of Brazil’s BRL-based stablecoins operating on the XRP Ledger, the network is increasingly proving itself as a robust foundation for tokenized financial assets.

Institutional use cases expandThe XRP Ledger is being recognized not just as a theoretical blockchain platform but as a reliable system that powers real-world financial applications. Its native tokenization features, scalable architecture, and solid track record of technical stability make it particularly appealing to institutions developing blockchain-based payment systems and digital asset issuance projects.

Within Ripple’s broader strategy, the XRP Ledger is seen as a foundational infrastructure for stablecoins, tokenized assets, and potentially in the future, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Ripple—which operates in the payments technology sphere—has long played a crucial role in supporting the growth and evolution of the XRP Ledger ecosystem.

IMF interest and technical upgrades in focusThis approach recently received additional validation when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) included the XRP Ledger among blockchain networks used by banks for stablecoin issuance. The move reflects not only the network’s relevance in crypto markets but also its growing profile in connecting crypto with traditional finance infrastructure.

Technical innovation is also underway on the network. The reintroduced Batch amendment now enables users to combine payments, token swaps, NFT purchases, and similar operations into a single secure transaction. This feature is designed to streamline operations and lower costs associated with complex transactions.

Mini glossary: The Batch amendment is a technical update on the XRP Ledger aimed at executing multiple operations in one connected action. It is intended to boost efficiency and lower transaction costs, particularly for payment and asset transfer uses.

The fact that the International Monetary Fund lists XRP Ledger among networks used by banks for stablecoin issuance is considered a sign of growing institutional interest.

With Brazil seeing more real-world stablecoin applications, increasing institutional engagement, and ongoing network enhancements, the XRP Ledger is steadily advancing beyond its origins as a speculative blockchain to become a critical piece of financial infrastructure in the region.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

The wallets of XRP users are currently being drained with the help of a new sophisticated phishing campaign that is based on the distribution of fake non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

A recent alert from XRP blockchain explorer Bithomp states that scammers are using fake "reward" and "payout" tokens to trick investors into authorizing malicious transactions. 

A single user lost a staggering $15,000 to the exploit in such a way. 

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The screenshots shared by Bithomp show that the transaction type was logged as an NFTokenAcceptOffer. 

The victim believed they were claiming a digital asset called "Ripple Payout Token #7357". 

The code executed a massive withdrawal valued at roughly $15,000 from the victim's balance and transferred it to the scammer's wallet. Obviously, the user ended up with a worthless bogus NFT.

The anatomy of a scam Bad actors exploit the low transaction fees on the XRP Ledger to mint hundreds of such fraudulent NFTs every single day. 

The scammers use highly official-sounding terminology to give the scam some sort of urgency and legitimacy. 

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There is a massive stream of new tokens with the names of the likes of "Securing XRPL Proof", "XRP Earning Permit", "XRP Cashback Card", "Ripple Benefit Badge", "Boosting Ripple Card" and "Ripple Grant Voucher."

The scammers distribute these tokens to active XRPL wallets or promote them on social media platforms, 

The site prompts them to sign a transaction once they connect their wallets. 

Crypto scam epidemic The scale of cryptocurrency fraud has reached unprecedented levels, with a recent FBI report showing that cryptocurrency-related fraud accounted for the most reported losses among all scam categories last year. Americans lost over $11.3 billion to crypto-related scams in 2025. 

A 2026 report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimates that a record $17 billion was stolen globally through crypto scams. Impersonation scams continue to reign supreme, and the rise of generative AI makes it more challenging to fight the scammers.