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Ripple ex-CTO David Schwartz has pushed back on claims that the XRP Ledger leaves everyday traders exposed to sandwich attacks, saying the risk is real but overstated.

Concerns surfaced on X after an account argued that validators and well-connected nodes gain a timing edge by observing pending transactions before each ledger closes. Sophisticated actors can then calculate whether front-running a trade is profitable, and spam multiple transactions to secure a favorable slot in the canonical order.

Sandwich Attack Mechanics on the XRP LedgerTransaction ordering on the XRP Ledger uses a deterministic formula involving transaction hashes. That formula is public. This lets actors position transactions ahead of a target trade on the XRP Ledger DEX and AMM, worsening slippage for ordinary users.

Concerns arose that the issue creates an uneven playing field, particularly for traders using popular wallets and decentralized applications.

Concerns have been raised about the possibility of front running or transaction sandwich attacks on XRPL payments and offer crossing.

For the reasons I've explained, I'm not that concerned about this issue. But I have a proposal for a fairly simple scheme that would eliminate… https://t.co/lnhTv1bhBK

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) June 29, 2026 David Schwartz. Source: XSchwartz Says Validators Cannot Act QuietlySchwartz acknowledged the concern but pointed to several mitigating factors, drawing on his earlier positions in XRP Ledger design debates. First, pending transactions are publicly visible to everyone before a ledger closes. No party holds exclusive early access. Second, a single validator gains no meaningful advantage. Coordinating multiple validators would leave clear evidence, since validators sign all proposals and validations.

“Running a validator does not help you do this unless multiple validators conspire. If multiple validators did conspire, or a single validator attempted it, it would be very obvious to everyone exactly who was doing this and that validator would be immediately removed from everyone’s trust lists.”

Schwartz also noted that confirmed attacks, beyond proof-of-concept testing, remain unreported. The core economic barrier is straightforward. Profitable attacks need high liquidity to justify the effort and low liquidity to move the price. Those two conditions rarely coincide. Recent XRP Ledger institutional privacy work addresses a related concern at the data layer.

A 2-Step Reservation Scheme for the XRP LedgerFor traders who want firmer guarantees, Schwartz outlined a transaction reservation approach. A user first broadcasts a reservation specifying a future ledger sequence number, a transaction ID, and a small fee. If that reservation confirms, the actual trade executes before any transaction submitted after the reservation went public. The approach requires two submissions per protected trade.

The method complements XRP Ledger privacy transfer proposals by targeting front-running at the execution layer rather than at the data layer.

XRP continues to trade well below its all-time high as attention turns to whether fairness improvements like this could support longer-term adoption.

Ripple vs SWIFT: Is XRP complementing the banking network or replacing it?

The amount of XRP on exchanges is dropping fast, as whales and sharks appear to be heavily stacking the altcoin.

XRP is seeing increased accumulation, evident in the number of coins remaining on exchanges. Over the past several months, the amount held on Binance, the largest crypto platform by trading volume, has continued to decline, reaching levels last seen in four months.

XRP Reserve on Binance Reaches 4-Month Low Data from CryptoQuant shows that the XRP exchange reserve on Binance has dropped to 2.64 billion tokens, about 4.2% of the asset’s circulating supply. While this is still sizable, it marks a notable decline from the figures recorded months back.

For context, Binance held roughly 2.8 billion XRP in its reserve in March. This figure reduced slightly before reaching a high of 2.78 billion in May. Today, the exchange’s XRP reserve has further dropped by 5% to 2.64 billion.

XRP Exchange Reserve/CryptoQuant Notably, the last time the amount of the token held by Binance hit this low was in February, over four months ago. Then the exchange’s reserve reached 2.55 billion, as market users bought the market dip.

Now, the current reserve drop suggests that smart money is back to buying the dip. Market users are increasingly moving XRP from where it can be easily sold to self-custody wallets, possibly for long-term holding.

Such activity is bullish in every sense. Not only does it reduce selling pressure, but it also shrinks available supply. That way, steady demand would have more impact on prices than when a larger supply is in the market. Additionally, it reflects confidence in XRP’s mid- and long-term price prospects.

XRP Exchange Outflow Beyond Binance Interestingly, the exchange outflow is not limited only to Binance. Coinglass data shows that over the past 10 days, a net total of $42.67 million has left trading platforms globally. During this period, inflows stand at $822 million and outflows at $864.6 million, culminating in the net difference.

This trend has extended even to recent data. In the last 24 hours, holders withdrew $69.84 million, larger than the inflows of $64 million by $5.78 million.

XRP Spot Flows/Coinglass The accumulation is notable because it comes despite the ongoing correction. XRP is down 7% in the past 24 hours, joining a broader market trend. Yet, market users see each dip as an opportunity to buy more, looking beyond the short-term bearish trend.

Aligning Bullish Metrics Other metrics also tick bullish for XRP. For context, active XRP addresses have increased 36% in the past two weeks as network activity improves. With more receiving wallets active on the XRPL Ledger, it also confirms that outflows are moving to long-term self-custody wallets.

Additionally, the TD Sequential also recently printed a buy signal on the XRP daily chart. This pattern confirms that selling pressure is nearing exhaustion, and a rebound could follow in the coming days.

XRP TD Sequentia Buy Signal/Ali Martinez In the meantime, XRP trades at $1.05, holding above the $1 support.

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.

XRP is still under heavy selling pressure, mirroring the broader crypto market. Both its USDT and BTC pairs continue to trade within clear downtrend structures. While the dollar pair is testing a major demand zone, the BTC pair is also hovering just above an important support level, leaving the market at a key decision point.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair The daily chart shows XRP extending its broader bearish structure while remaining confined inside a long-term descending channel. The asset is currently trading around $1.05 after losing several higher lows over the past few weeks, confirming that sellers continue to dominate the higher timeframe.

The most important support now sits in the $1.00 to $1.10 zone, where the price is currently attempting to stabilize. This area has previously attracted demand and could produce a relief bounce if buyers manage to defend it once again. However, the overall trend remains bearish as XRP continues to trade below both major moving averages, with the 100-day and 200-day averages sloping lower simultaneously and acting as dynamic resistance levels.

Any recovery attempt is likely to face its first obstacle around the 100-day moving average near the $1.3 area, which coincides with the upper boundary of the descending channel. A breakout above both the channel resistance and the moving average would be required to signal a meaningful shift in market structure.

On the downside, losing the current support area could expose the lower boundary of the descending channel near the $0.80 region, making this support zone particularly important for the medium-term outlook.

The BTC Pair Against Bitcoin, XRP continues to underperform, with the XRP/BTC pair remaining firmly inside its own descending channel. The pair is currently trading around 1,750 sats, sitting directly above a horizontal support level that has repeatedly prevented deeper declines since May.

Although this support has held on multiple occasions, none of the subsequent rebounds has produced a clear bullish breakout, highlighting persistent selling pressure and a lack of sustained bullish momentum. The repeated failures near the 100-day moving average further reinforce the bearish structure.

Overhead, the first major horizontal resistance is located around 1,850 sats, which converges with the declining 100-day moving average. Above that, stronger resistance emerges near 2,000 sats, followed by the descending 200-day moving average and the upper channel resistance. As long as XRP remains below these resistance clusters, the trend against Bitcoin favors continued relative weakness.

On the downside, a confirmed breakdown below the 1,700 sats support region would likely invalidate the current consolidation and open the door for another leg lower toward the psychological support level around 1,500 sats, and potentially lower. This keeps XRP at a critical decision point on both USDT and BTC charts, as the buyers and sellers fight one another to establish dominance over the trend.

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XRP is at a pivotal moment, according to market analyst Cryptollica, as technical indicators signal a potential turning point. The asset is approaching its most significant oversold structure in 13 years, with the Relative Strength Index (RSI) dropping to its lowest level on record. Cryptollica points out that this development mirrors the conditions seen before major price rallies in previous market cycles.

RSI signals extreme oversold territoryThe RSI is a widely used technical indicator that gauges market momentum and helps determine if an asset is in overbought or oversold territory. In the case of XRP, the RSI has fallen to around 23—a figure that suggests an anomalous setup, indicating that selling pressure may be easing. Cryptollica argues that the current RSI level is even weaker than the lows witnessed in previous cycles, highlighting an unusually oversold technical picture.

Mini glossary: RSI is a momentum indicator that measures the speed and direction of an asset’s price movement. In technical analysis, readings below 30 typically indicate oversold conditions, while values above 70 point to overbought territory.

Cryptollica finds that XRP touching its lowest-ever RSI forms a backdrop similar to prior oversold periods ahead of major price surges.

The analyst notes that prevailing market pessimism could eventually reverse, potentially kickstarting a robust recovery if XRP holds crucial support zones. However, a confirmation of this scenario requires that the price maintains those levels.

$1.05 emerges as a key decision pointMarket commentator Josiah Gallegos considers $1.05 to be decisive for XRP’s short- and medium-term momentum. A weekly close above this level could strengthen bullish expectations, while a move below may drive the price toward the $0.75 to $0.90 range, as it searches for liquidity and a firmer base. According to CoinCodex data, XRP is currently trading at $1.05.

IndicatorLevelPotential outcomeCurrent price$1.05Critical support areaWeekly closeAbove $1.05Bullish outlook may strengthenSupport breakdown$0.75 to $0.90Liquidity sweep and new base searchJosiah Gallegos emphasizes that holding above $1.05 is crucial for a bullish scenario, while deeper pullbacks could offer gradual buying opportunities for long-term investors.

Gallegos sees potential deeper corrections as opportunities for long-term investors to accumulate step by step. Additionally, the convergence of the 50-week and 200-week exponential moving averages is being monitored. Such convergence is rare and historically has often preceded major trend reversals.

Regulatory developments under watchBeyond technical signals, developments on the regulatory front in the United States could be pivotal for XRP. Investors are watching the proposed CLARITY Act, which aims to establish a clearer legal framework for digital assets. Given XRP’s historical sensitivity to regulatory changes, greater clarity in this area may influence price action.

If enacted, the legislation could reduce regulatory uncertainty, boost institutional interest, and bolster overall market sentiment. As a result, all eyes are on XRP’s record-low RSI, $1.05 support level, converging long-term averages, and the prospect of regulatory clarity—all of which together have taken center stage for the market.

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.

For the last several years, most blockchain progress has focused on asset representation and transfers, issuing digital instruments, settling transactions faster, and reducing friction in value transfer.

But moving an asset onchain is only half the job. Real financial markets depend on what happens next: borrowing against assets, putting them to work as collateral, accessing liquidity without having to sell. That layer - lending and credit - barely exists onchain yet, and its absence is what stops tokenized markets from functioning like real capital markets

As more real-world assets move onchain, including treasuries, money market funds, stablecoins, commodities, and private credit, the question is no longer just whether those assets can exist onchain. It is: How do they become productive once they are there? How does a payment provider bridge liquidity between settlement windows? How does a market maker finance inventory without selling assets? How does an institution borrow against onchain holdings using terms its treasury and risk teams can actually evaluate?

That is the problem the XRPL Lending Protocol is designed to solve. In building the protocol, we made a deliberate choice to keep credit judgement off-chain, and standardize execution onchain. This is the core design principle.

The Missing Layer in Onchain Finance

Tokenization has made real progress. Assets that used to live only inside bank and fund admin systems can now be represented onchain.

The infrastructure to issue and hold an asset is fundamentally different from the infrastructure to finance against it. In traditional markets, those are separate systems. Custody and issuance live in one place. Financing - repo, margin lending, structured credit, working capital facilities - runs through another. That second layer is what makes assets productive, not just portable.

Most blockchain systems still blur those lines. A token gets issued. A lending application gets built around it. Another protocol creates its own borrowing rules, liquidation logic, and risk model. That was workable for early experimentation. For institutions evaluating credit activity, the result is a fragmented landscape, with liquidity scattered across isolated pools, credit behavior inconsistent across markets, and risk that must be re-underwritten protocol by protocol.

Building a durable credit layer requires treating credit as infrastructure, not as one more application layered on top of the network.

Why Credit Should Live at the Protocol Layer

Blockchains are good at enforcing rules consistently and recording what happened permanently. What they cannot do is make credit judgments - deciding whether a borrower is creditworthy, navigating regulatory requirements that differ by jurisdiction, or assessing collateral the way a lender would.

A blockchain should not replace credit teams, legal documentation, or institution-specific compliance frameworks. Those belong off-chain, where the judgment required to do them well can actually be applied. What the protocol can do is standardize what happens after a credit decision has been made: how liquidity is pooled, how loans are originated, how interest accrues, how repayment schedules are enforced, how defaults are processed.

Most onchain lending systems have conflated the two by building underwriting assumptions directly into protocol logic, which is where institutional usability begins to break down.

The XRPL Lending Protocol takes the opposite approach. Institutions handle the credit judgment off-chain, while the protocol standardizes execution once terms have been agreed.

What the XRPL Lending Protocol Makes Possible

The XRPL Lending Protocol is built on two complementary components:

Single Asset Vault — a standardized structure for pooling and managing a single asset onchain.Lending Protocol — enables that pooled liquidity to be originated into loans with defined terms, servicing, and repayment logic.Together, they provide a foundation for onchain credit. The vault is where liquidity is organized, and the lending protocol is how that liquidity is put to work.

This separation mirrors real financial infrastructure. In capital markets, the container that holds assets is not the same thing as the mechanism that finances them. By preserving that distinction, XRPL can support a wider range of credit structures over time, rather than hard-coding one lending model into a single application.

Technical note: The Single Asset Vault and Lending Protocol are defined in XLS-65 and XLS-66, respectively, and remain subject to validator approval.

What This Looks Like in Practice

A payment provider holds RLUSD reserves onchain, but a cross-border settlement won’t close for another 48 hours. They need liquidity now to fund outgoing payments. Instead of drawing on an expensive bank credit line or selling assets at the wrong time, they access a short-term working capital facility through a licensed pool administrator, borrowing against expected settlement inflows.

The loan terms are agreed upfront. Repayment occurs according to those terms and is enforced by the protocol. There is no manual process, no governance vote, and no ambiguity around how the facility operates at maturity.

Before accessing the pool, both lenders and borrowers complete compliance checks. Once approved, verifiable credentials determine who can participate and under what conditions.

That is institutional-grade onchain credit, replacing a bank credit line that might cost 300-400bps with a facility whose terms are transparent, auditable, and enforced programmatically And it is the foundation for more: inventory financing for market makers, underwritten facilities backed by digital assets, and over time, more sophisticated structures, built on a common execution layer rather than rebuilt from scratch each time.

Built for Institutional Use

The XRPL Lending Protocol is designed around a simple principle: institutions retain control over credit decisions, while the protocol standardizes how those decisions are executed.

Underwriting stays off-chain. Institutions already have credit teams, policies, legal documentation, collateral agreements, concentration limits, and regulatory obligations. The protocol assumes underwriting is done off-chain by the appropriate institution. Once terms are agreed, the blockchain enforces the mechanics. Credit assessment and credit execution are separate functions - and they should stay that way.Loan behavior is enforced natively onchain. Once a loan is originated, repayment schedules, interest calculations, and default conditions follow predefined rules. Risk teams, auditors, and regulators need to understand how a system behaves under both normal and stressed conditions - and standardizing those behaviors at the protocol layer makes it easier to evaluate, operate, and trust.Risk is structured, not socialized. The protocol supports first-loss capital at the facility level. Pool administrators or underwriters put junior capital at risk ahead of senior liquidity providers. Keeping losses contained at the facility level aligns incentives, enables risk-based pricing, and reflects how institutional credit markets are typically structured.Why XRPL: Public Network, Protocol-Level Standards

Institutional credit markets require two things that have often been difficult to reconcile onchain: broad network participation and institutional-grade controls.

Public lending protocols - Aave, Compound, Maple, and Clearpool - demonstrated that onchain lending can operate at scale and attract meaningful liquidity. At the same time, many were designed around crypto-native governance models and risk frameworks that don't align with how institutions evaluate and manage credit risk. When a protocol changes its risk model, institutions have no reliable way to underwrite that change in advance - and that is not a manageable edge case. It is the core of how risk underwriting works.

Private and permissioned systems address many of those control requirements, but often do so by limiting participation to a closed set of counterparties. While that can create consistency, it cuts off the liquidity, distribution, and network effects that make public infrastructure valuable.

XRPL is designed to bring those capabilities together.

Credit infrastructure is standardized at the protocol layer rather than implemented through isolated applications with their own governance models and risk frameworks. The network remains public, allowing institutions to access broader liquidity and distribution while supporting permissioned participation through credentials when required.

Credit markets do not exist in isolation. They sit alongside payments, collateral movements, treasury operations, and settlement flows. XRPL has been handling institutional settlement at scale for over a decade. Building a financing layer on the same network that supports those activities reduces operational complexity and allows institutions to manage more of the financial lifecycle in one place.

What This Unlocks

The lending protocol matters not because it creates another yield product, but because it makes digital assets more productive. It gives institutions a way to treat onchain assets as working capital rather than static inventory.

A payment provider can access short-duration liquidity to bridge settlement timing gaps.A market maker can finance inventory without selling core assets.A treasury team can deploy idle digital assets into underwritten facilities with clearer terms and risk allocation.A lender can build structured credit products on top of a common infrastructure layer instead of building a custom protocol from scratch.Beyond Tokenization

The next phase of blockchain in finance will not be defined by whether an asset can be tokenized. That is becoming table stakes.

The harder question is what happens once those assets are onchain. Capital markets are not defined by asset ownership alone. They depend on financing, collateralization, liquidity management, and the ability to move capital efficiently through a system. The challenge is no longer whether assets can exist onchain. It is whether the infrastructure around them can make those assets productive.

The infrastructure decisions made now, where credit logic lives, how obligations are enforced, how risk is allocated, will determine whether onchain capital markets develop real depth.

The XRPL Lending Protocol (XLS-65, XLS-66) is subject to validator approval. Infrastructure providers and developers can begin integrating and testing on devnet today — see the Lending Protocol in action and help define how onchain credit markets take shape.

Ripple is pushing the XRP Ledger into institutional lending territory with the XLS-66 Lending Protocol, paired with XLS-65 Single Asset Vaults, a framework that enables fixed-term credit facilities funded by pooled deposits and settled automatically on-ledger. Institutions put assets into a vault, borrowers draw from that pool on defined terms, and the ledger handles repayment mechanics without a middleman touching the money.

The underwriting still happens off-chain. Risk assessment, credit decisions, compliance checks: all conducted before anything touches the ledger. Once approved, execution is automated.

How the protocol actually works Single Asset Vaults, defined under XLS-65, are the deposit side of the equation. Liquidity providers deposit into these vaults, which then fund fixed-term loans to institutional borrowers.

The loans themselves are uncollateralized in the traditional crypto sense. There is no overcollateralization requirement like you would see on Aave or Compound. Instead, underwriting happens through off-chain credit assessment, which means the protocol is explicitly designed for institutions that can be evaluated like real-world borrowers, not anonymous wallets.

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The protocol also integrates with Multi-Purpose Tokens, XRPL’s flexible tokenization standard, as well as Credentials and Permissioned Domains, features that allow the ledger to enforce compliance rules at the infrastructure level. An institution can participate only if it meets the criteria embedded in the domain.

Rippled v3.1.0, which shipped in late January 2026, moved the Lending Protocol amendment into validator voting. The amendment has since received a re-audit by Halborn, a blockchain security firm, clearing one of the last major technical hurdles before broader deployment.

The tokenized RWA context Tokenized RWAs on the ledger exceeded $3 billion in value by late April 2026, according to RWA.xyz data. That figure represents a 59% increase in a single month. The growth is being driven by two main asset classes: energy-backed tokens and Ondo Finance’s tokenized US Treasuries.

Energy-backed tokens represent physical energy assets, typically tied to production or reserves, that have been tokenized for on-chain trading and financing.

Evernorth, a firm holding a significant quantity of XRP, publicly announced in January 2026 its intent to participate in the Lending Protocol once live. The firm’s interest is straightforward: deposit XRP holdings into vaults, earn yield from borrower interest.

What this means for XRPL’s competitive position The institutional DeFi space is not empty. Ethereum has a substantial head start in DeFi infrastructure, and networks like Avalanche and Polygon have also made dedicated pushes toward institutional adoption. What XRPL is betting on is that compliance-native infrastructure, meaning a ledger where permissioned access and credential verification are built into the base layer rather than bolted on top, will matter more to regulated institutions than raw liquidity depth.

The Halborn re-audit is part of that story. Institutional risk teams want documented security reviews before they allocate, and XRPL has now cleared that bar for the lending layer.

For XRP as an asset, the lending protocol introduces a new demand variable. Vault deposits denominated in XRP create holding incentives that go beyond simple speculation. If institutions are depositing XRP to earn yield, that represents a category of demand that is less sensitive to short-term price volatility and more tied to the protocol’s utilization rate.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

XRP Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC on June 26 that Ripple now processes approximately $16 trillion in annual payments and clearing activity across its acquired businesses, and that digital assets, including XRP, account for “close to zero percent” of that volume.

That gap is either the most compelling institutional payments story in crypto or one of the most misread setups in the market right now, depending on which numbers you trust.

This commentary from Garlinghouse came as XRP opened the week down around -1% and is currently trading for $1.04, worrying close to the long-standing $1 support zone, which, if lost, could see a freefall toward $0.80.

Brad Garlinghouse on CNBC: The long-term value of digital assets comes from utility, not financial engineering.

That utility is showing up in the numbers.$XRP On-Demand Liquidity processed $1.2B in Q1 2026, up 45% YoY, highlighting growing real-world cross-border adoption on…

— XRP Update (@XrpUdate) June 27, 2026

The $16 Trillion Gap and What It Actually Means Garlinghouse framed the figure as an opportunity, not a failure. “How do we bring traditional finance into the modern architecture of blockchain?” he said, adding that through acquisitions, “we have a tremendous opportunity to bring that in.” The $16 trillion covers payments and clearing throughput across businesses Ripple has acquired; it is not a pipeline of pending XRP transactions.

That distinction matters. In an April 2026 Fox Business interview tied to the GTreasury acquisition, Garlinghouse cited a similar $13 trillion figure and projected that around 30% of that volume could migrate to blockchain rails within five years. Even a 1% migration at sustained velocity would represent volumes orders of magnitude beyond current on-chain settlement activity.

Ripple has been building the infrastructure to handle that shift. Real-world examples of Ripple’s payment infrastructure already span multiple corridors, and the XRP Ledger now hosts live stablecoin deployments.

Ripple and Bitso are running both MXNB and RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for US–Mexico dollar-peso liquidity. Bitso supports more than 10 million users and over 2,000 institutional clients on that corridor alone.

DISCOVER: Best Meme Coin ICOs to Invest in 2026

The XRP Ripple 100x Math Is Hard to Parse

The “XRP 100x” framing circulating across YouTube and X originates from third-party content creators, not from Garlinghouse or Ripple directly. Garlinghouse has consistently declined to issue numerical price targets.

The most cited institutional XRP price prediction comes from Standard Chartered analysts, who projected XRP at $8 in 2026 and $12.50 by 2028, per CNBC coverage, meaningful upside from current levels, but nowhere near a 100x move.

A 100x from present prices would require a market capitalization that would rank XRP among the largest financial assets on earth. That is not impossible in a multi-decade horizon, but it requires assuming XRP becomes the dominant settlement asset across Ripple’s entire institutional stack, a scenario that competes directly with RLUSD and other stablecoins that may capture transaction value without requiring XRP as the bridge asset at all.

Ripple itself is targeting a $1Bn annual revenue run rate by end-2026, explicitly excluding XRP holdings, according to Yahoo Finance. That signals the business model is built on infrastructure fees, custody, settlement, treasury services, not on XRP price appreciation.

XRP ETF inflows and price performance data reflect that disconnect: institutional interest has grown without a corresponding price breakout, precisely because adoption of the rails does not automatically translate into demand for the token.

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Bull Case, Base Case, Bear Case for Crypto 2026 Few believed the potential back then, but it happened. On the flip side for $XRP, we have entered historical oversold levels on several indicators. The reset is much closer to being over than just beginning. Signals are now flashing. We are closing in. Thank you @MoonLamboio 🤝🏻 pic.twitter.com/qcNdkidOvR

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) June 28, 2026

Bull case: Ripple converts even 5–10% of its $16 trillion payment base onto XRP Ledger settlement rails, CME derivatives deepen institutional liquidity, RLUSD on XRPL drives sustained bridge-asset demand for XRP, and regulatory clarity post-SEC case resolution accelerates bank adoption. XRP re-rates toward Standard Chartered’s $8–$12.50 range and beyond.

Base case: Ripple hits its $1 billion revenue target through infrastructure fees. RLUSD and MXNB handle the stablecoin settlement layer. XRP retains utility as a bridge asset in corridors where speed and cost matter, but token price tracks modest volume growth rather than exponential adoption. Crypto 2026 sees XRP trade in line with broader market sentiment.

Bear case: Stablecoins capture the visible settlement value on the XRP Ledger without requiring XRP as an intermediary. The $16 trillion figure stays largely off-chain. Price stagnates as enterprise adoption of Ripple’s infrastructure grows without a corresponding increase in token demand.

Ripple Swell 2026, expected to draw more than 1,500 attendees, 75+ speakers, and 50+ sessions, will be the next major test of whether the blockchain settlement narrative translates into committed institutional volume.

The infrastructure case for institutional payments on the XRP Ledger is the most credible it has ever been. The 100x case requires several additional dominoes to fall in sequence, and Garlinghouse himself has not promised they will.

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Alex Ioannou

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Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More

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Key Takeaways YoungHoon Kim, holder of the world’s highest verified IQ score (276), declared that the XRP Supercycle has only just commenced Three concurrent indicators have emerged: TD Sequential “9” buy formation, Morning Star Doji reversal pattern, and dramatic spike in daily active addresses XRP Ledger daily active addresses surged from approximately 23,000 to nearly 39,500 within a two-week period Kim’s earlier forecast projects XRP reaching $5–$10 during this market cycle; achieving $10 would represent a 646%+ increase from current levels Single-day XRP ETF inflows reached $11.88 million in May, contributing to cumulative 2026 net inflows of approximately $1.42 billion XRP currently trades around $1.05 following a convergence of technical indicators and a prominent market prediction that has refocused attention on the digital asset. A trio of signals has materialized simultaneously, capturing interest from traders monitoring both price charts and blockchain metrics.

XRP Price YoungHoon Kim, who holds the verified world record for highest IQ score at 276, announced on X that the XRP Supercycle is merely in its initial phase. The statement rapidly circulated throughout cryptocurrency forums and rekindled debate surrounding XRP’s potential long-term valuation.

Kim had earlier established a price projection between $5 and $10 for XRP during this market cycle. From present levels around $1.05, ascending to $5 would necessitate approximately a 376% appreciation. Climbing to $10 would translate to roughly an 852% surge.

Not all market participants embrace Kim’s perspective. Multiple X users challenged his viewpoint, highlighting that his earlier XRP forecasts failed to materialize. Additional critics questioned both his authority and the foundation supporting his $10 projection.

XRP remains approximately 67% below its July 2025 all-time peak of $3.66. That substantial distance renders the higher boundary of Kim’s target an ambitious objective from current trading levels.

Convergence of Three Technical Indicators Market analyst Ali Charts identified that the Tom DeMark Sequential indicator generated a “9” buy formation on XRP’s daily timeframe. This signal typically emerges near downtrend exhaustion points and may precede brief price rebounds spanning one to four trading sessions.

XRP: TWO BULLISH SIGNALS

XRP is flashing two bullish reversal signals on the daily chart, pointing to a potential shift in momentum.

1. The Tom DeMark Sequential indicator has printed a buy signal via a "9" candlestick. This pattern historically anticipates a one-to-four daily… pic.twitter.com/q0qBDVCGXT

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) June 27, 2026

A Morning Star Doji reversal formation also materialized over three consecutive sessions within the $1.02 to $1.07 support range. This candlestick configuration suggests a possible near-term price floor.

The third indicator originates from blockchain data. Daily active addresses on the XRP Ledger climbed from approximately 23,000 on June 14 to nearly 39,500 recently, indicating genuine network engagement beyond purely speculative trading.

Market analyst ChartNerdTA observed that XRP’s cyclical peaks have traditionally occurred at three to five-year intervals. Should a cycle trough establish during 2026, the subsequent potential peak might materialize between 2028 and 2030.

Investment Product Flows and Market Metrics XRP’s total market capitalization continues exceeding $65 billion, per CoinGecko data. Institutional appetite has remained consistent, with XRP-linked ETF products attracting $11.88 million during a single trading session on May 29.

Aggregate net inflows into XRP investment vehicles achieved approximately $1.42 billion throughout 2026, representing the most robust ETF capital influx period the token has experienced to date.

For near-term upward momentum confirmation, market analysts indicate XRP requires persistent buying pressure and a decisive breach above the $1.30 resistance threshold.

Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.

Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.

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Leading cryptocurrencies traded in the red overnight on Sunday as renewed U.S.–Iran confrontations threatened a fragile ceasefire.

Crypto Market In Deep SlumberBitcoin attempted a breakout above $60,000, only to encounter sharp selling pressure that drove it below $59,000. Ethereum meandered in the $1,500 region, while trading volume rose 10% over the last 24 hours. XRP and Dogecoin traded in the red.

Over $180 million was liquidated from the cryptocurrency market in the last 24 hours, overwhelmingly from longs, according to Coinglass data

Bitcoin’s open interest fell 0.69% over the last 24 hours. Smart money sentiment remained "extremely bearish," but traders on Binance, both retail and whales, increased their long exposure.

"Extreme Fear" sentiment prevailed in the market, according to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.

Top Gainers (24 Hours) 

The global cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.02 trillion, following a decline of 3.38% over the last 24 hours.

Stocks Rally On Hopes Of De-escalationStock futures ticked higher overnight on Sunday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures jumped 147 points, or 0.29%, as of 8:45 p.m. EDT.  Futures tied to the S&P 500 climbed 0.40%, while Nasdaq 100 Futures gained 0.19%.

Tensions escalated during the weekend after the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire following an alleged ceasefire violation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Later, a Trump administration official reportedly said that the two sides will “stand down for now” and let vessels move freely in the critical oil shipping point.

‘Pretty Interesting Signal’Popular cryptocurrency commentator Michaël van de Poppe speculated on Bitcoin’s moves once it breaks back above $61,000.

“It would strengthen the thesis of the bullish divergence, and the markets can target the $65,000 resistance [and old support of the range] as the next target zone,” the analyst said. “The fact that the markets aren’t falling deeper with all the panic and fear combined is actually a pretty interesting signal.”

Ali Martinez, a widely followed cryptocurrency analyst and trader, said that heavy selling by whales, roughly $880 million over the past week, pushed Ethereum below its key support at $1,633

“If this distribution trend continues into next week, the next high-volume demand targets for ETH sit much lower at $1,237 and $1,089,” Martinez said.

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With price action still adhering to a distinct bearish structure, XRP is still among the market's weakest large-cap assets. XRP broke below the range and accelerated lower after consolidating between about $1.30 and $1.50 for several months. The asset was driven toward the psychologically significant $1.00 support level by the breakdown, which validated a bearish continuation pattern. 

The 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages of XRP are all technically above its current price, reflecting a downward slope. Usually, this alignment means that sellers are still in complete control. The RSI is getting close to oversold territory at 32, indicating that the short-term downside momentum may be running out. However, during severe downtrends, oversold conditions by themselves seldom indicate a bottom. 

XRP/USDT Chart by TradingViewThe crucial level to keep an eye on is $1.00. Another wave of selling could be sparked by a clear break below it, opening the door to lower support zones. On the other hand, XRP might experience a relief rally toward the 50-day EMA at $1.14-$1.15 if buyers are able to hold this area. Until the asset regains significant moving averages, the trend remains negative. 

HOT Stories

Shiba Inu forms a breakdown SHIB is displaying a quite similar structure. Recently, the asset broke out of a rising wedge formation, which frequently precedes bearish continuation moves. SHIB has not established a significant recovery since the breakdown and is still trading close to local lows. SHIB is still below all of the major moving averages, just like XRP. 

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The 50-day EMA is preventing buyers from creating long-term momentum by acting as dynamic resistance. Recent attempts at a bounce have not seen a significant increase in volume, suggesting that bulls are not very confident. SHIB is firmly in oversold territory as the RSI has dropped toward 21. 

The overall trend still favors sellers, even though this increases the likelihood of a short-term recovery. The recently broken wedge structure and the 50-day moving average are likely to present obstacles for any recovery attempt. 

The current move appears to be more of a continuation of the larger downtrend than the start of a true reversal unless SHIB can recover those levels.

Pressure on Bitcoin remainsDespite its efforts to stabilize above the $60,000 mark, Bitcoin is still under significant pressure. The medium-term bullish structure was effectively terminated and a return to bearish control was confirmed when the asset broke away from an ascending trendline that had sustained the recovery rally from April to May. 

The 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages of Bitcoin are all significantly above the current price on the chart. The market has lost a lot of momentum during the most recent correction, as evidenced by the 200-day moving average near $76,000 becoming a distant resistance level. Additionally, recent attempts at a bounce have not been successful in regaining the 50-day EMA, indicating that sellers still control every relief rally. At 32, the RSI is getting close to oversold territory. 

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Although this might encourage a temporary recovery, the overall trend is still negative. Crucially, volume increased throughout the sell-off, suggesting true distribution as opposed to just a lack of buyers. The $58,000-$60,000 support zone is a crucial level to keep an eye on. 

Another wave of liquidation pressure could hit the market if Bitcoin loses this area. On the other hand, the first sign that the bearish momentum is starting to wane would be a rebound above the 50-day EMA around $64,000. Until then, sellers continue to have the upper hand and Bitcoin remains stuck in a downtrend.

Solana's breakout potential Solana is showing remarkable resilience in contrast to Bitcoin. Even though SOL saw a significant drop earlier in June, buyers intervened forcefully near the $63-$65 support range, keeping the asset above regional lows. 

Technically, SOL is still below its major moving averages, indicating that the long-term trend is still negative. The asset has started to consolidate around the 50-day EMA at $72, and it recently produced a higher low. Many large-cap cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, continue to set new lows. After a period of oversold conditions, the RSI has recovered toward 49, returning to neutral territory. 

SOL/USDT Chart by TradingViewThis suggests that selling pressure has significantly decreased. During recent recovery attempts, volume has also increased, indicating real buyer involvement. Regaining the 50-day EMA and establishing support above $72 is the bulls' immediate challenge. A move toward the 100-day moving average near $77 is more likely if that happens. 

In the event that current levels are not maintained, the $63 support zone would become more prominent. Even though there is currently no proof of a complete trend reversal, SOL remains one of the more promising assets among the major cryptocurrencies.

California’s DFAL Clock Is Ticking: XRP Price Hanging in the Balance

Ahmed Barakat

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Ahmed Balaha is a journalist and copywriter based in Georgia with a growing focus on blockchain technology, DeFi, AI, privacy, digital assets, and fintech innovation.

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California’s Digital Financial Assets Law will take effect on July 1. It requires any firm conducting digital asset business activity with state residents to hold a DFAL license, and have a completed application on file with the DFPI, or cease covered operations. Right now, as of public records, no Ripple entity appears among applicants. XRP price has fallen below the $1.10 level at this moment of uncertainty.

DFAL covers the exchange of digital assets for fiat or other digital assets, their transfer between persons, custody, and the issuance of reserve-backed instruments. It maps directly onto Ripple’s California-facing operations: payments infrastructure, custody services, and the issuance and redemption of RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin.

Ripple’s existing portfolio of 40-plus U.S. money transmitter licenses does not automatically satisfy DFAL; the law is a separate regime administered by the DFPI through the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System.

However, there are three paths to legal compliance by July 1: hold a DFAL license, have a completed application pending with the DFPI, or qualify under a narrow statutory exemption, primarily available to banks, certain trust companies, and SEC- or CFTC-registered entities operating within already-regulated activity.

🗓️Key date for @Ripple – July 1.
Ripple previously engaged CA's DFPI for a DFAL license noting firms can keep operating if submit by 7/1/26. Public docs through March '26 don't list any Ripple entities, though likely filed. Necessary for all CA offerings, issue/redeem/custody. pic.twitter.com/xfQK4Z3IBc

— WrathofKahneman (@WKahneman) June 19, 2026 Ripple has engaged with the process as the company submitted a formal comment letter to the DFPI, pushing to eliminate redundant money transmitter license requirements for DFAL-licensed firms. However, engagement is not the same as a filed application.

Law firms, including Chambers-ranked practices, have described DFAL as one of the most expansive state-level digital asset licensing regimes in the country.

Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio

Can XRP Price Hold $1 If Ripple Misses the DFAL Deadline?XRP is trading near $1.10, far below the expected $2.50 many predicted. Recent price action reflects weak momentum, with sellers repeatedly capping rallies around the $1.15 to $1.20 area. Despite ongoing attention on Ripple’s regulatory developments, the market has yet to price in a decisive positive outcome.

Meanwhile, investors remain focused on several legal and regulatory milestones involving Ripple. The court’s earlier finding that XRP itself is not inherently a security removed a major uncertainty. However, the remaining penalty and injunction issues still matter because they could influence Ripple’s future business operations and market sentiment.

From a technical perspective, XRP must first reclaim the $1.15 to $1.20 zone before traders can discuss a stronger trend reversal. If buyers regain control and regulatory developments remain favorable, the next resistance area could emerge around $1.30 to $1.50. A sustained move above those levels would likely require a meaningful catalyst.

On the downside, support remains clustered around $1.05 and $1.00. If regulatory expectations weaken or broader crypto markets turn lower, those levels could come under pressure. The $1.00 mark remains an important psychological threshold, as a decisive break could invite additional selling.

For now, the market appears to be waiting for confirmation rather than trading on assumptions. Regulatory progress could improve sentiment, yet XRP’s longer-term trajectory will likely depend on both legal clarity and stronger demand returning to the market.

Don’t Miss Out on Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop on ByBit

Brad Garlinghouse said one word, “maybe,” and the XRP community heard a promise. Asked whether holders could get a piece of Ripple if it goes public, he nodded toward a “special arrangement.” This is what was actually said, what holders could realistically receive, and the downside almost nobody is talking about.

Summary

Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said that “if and when” Ripple goes public, the company might do “something special” for XRP holders, then immediately added it was “not in the immediate term.” That hedged “maybe” was offered in response to a direct question, not volunteered as a plan, and he declined to commit to any mechanism such as a token buyback. Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets: holding XRP grants no shares, no dividends, and no claim on Ripple’s corporate profits, and no bridge between the two currently exists. The mechanisms holders imagine, preferential IPO share access, long-term holding rewards, or tokenized Ripple equity, are all unannounced and face serious securities-law hurdles given XRP’s legal history. The overlooked risk is that a Ripple IPO could actually pressure XRP, by drawing institutional capital toward Ripple stock and pushing the company to monetize its escrow holdings to satisfy public-market investors. One word from Ripple’s chief executive set the XRP community alight, and that word was “maybe.” Speaking on the “Crypto In America” podcast with journalist Eleanor Terrett, Brad Garlinghouse was asked the question XRP holders have wanted answered for years: if Ripple ever goes public, could the people who hold XRP get a piece of it. He did not say no. He gestured first at the indirect benefits Ripple already provides, then, pressed on whether the company would do something specific for holders in an initial public offering, he said, “Maybe, but that is not in the immediate term.”

JUST IN: Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the company processed $13T in payments last year with no immediate IPO plans pic.twitter.com/f9bd80FPsX

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) May 5, 2026 That was the entire substance of it, a hedged possibility wrapped in a qualification, offered in answer to a direct question rather than announced as a plan. And yet within hours it had been clipped, shared, and reshaped across XRP social media into something close to a corporate commitment, with community members urging one another to “hold accordingly.” The gap between what Garlinghouse actually said and what the community heard is the real story here, because the difference between a hinted-at maybe and a planned reward is the difference between a reasonable hope and a misplaced expectation.

The reason the remark landed so hard is the situation it landed into. XRP holders have spent 2026 watching Ripple collect exactly the kind of institutional wins the community long predicted, settlements with JPMorgan, stablecoin launches with major partners, a steady drumbeat of bank deals, while the token itself has stayed pinned near a dollar and change, beneath every major moving average. That combination, corporate triumph paired with token stagnation, breeds a particular hunger: the sense that the wins are real but are somehow not reaching holders, and that some missing mechanism could finally connect the two. Into that hunger dropped Garlinghouse’s nod, and it did what a catalyst does in a starved market.

This piece separates the hope from the reality. It covers exactly what was said and the precise wording that matters, the crucial distinction between Ripple the company and XRP the token, the mechanisms a holder benefit could theoretically take and why each is harder than it sounds, why Ripple may not even go public soon, the indirect benefit Ripple genuinely does provide, and the downside almost nobody is discussing: that an IPO could actually work against XRP. The goal is the real picture, neither dismissing the possibility nor inflating it into the certainty the hype implied.

What Garlinghouse actually said Precision matters here, because the entire community reaction rests on a few carefully chosen words, and those words were more conditional than the excitement suggested. Garlinghouse did not volunteer the remark; he was asked directly whether XRP holders could share in Ripple’s success if the company eventually launched an initial public offering. His first instinct was to point to the indirect benefit Ripple already provides, saying he hopes XRP holders feel they benefit from Ripple’s existence through the work the company does to grow the XRP ecosystem. Only when pressed on whether Ripple would do something specific for holders in an IPO scenario did he offer the line that ignited everything: “Maybe, but that is not in the immediate term.”

When pushed further on concrete mechanisms, including a possible token buyback, he declined to commit to any of them, pointing back instead to what Ripple already does for the ecosystem. So the full extent of the supposed promise is a “maybe,” qualified as not near-term, given in response to a direct question rather than offered as a plan, with no program described, no mechanism named, and no action committed to. The community heard “Ripple will do something special for holders.” What Garlinghouse actually said was closer to “maybe someday, if we go public, which is not happening soon.”

Those are not the same statement, and stacking the two conditionals reveals how far the exciting headline sits from anything concrete: a possible benefit, attached to a possible IPO, that he himself describes as not a priority. It is worth adding that days earlier, at an industry conference, Garlinghouse had been cooler still on the idea of going public at all, emphasizing that staying private gives Ripple flexibility. Read in that context, the podcast remark was a hint, not a plan and certainly not a promise. Any honest assessment of what holders would actually get has to begin from that fact rather than from the amplified version that spread online.

Ripple is not XRP: the distinction that decides everything To understand why this question is so charged, and so easily misunderstood, you have to grasp a distinction that still confuses many people: Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets, and owning one does not mean owning the other. Ripple is a private technology company that builds payment and liquidity products, some of which use the XRP Ledger. XRP is a cryptocurrency, the native asset of the XRP Ledger, which is a decentralized, open-source blockchain that Ripple does not control. Holding XRP gives you ownership of that token and nothing else.

It confers no shares in Ripple, no dividends, no voting rights, and no claim whatsoever on Ripple’s corporate profits or assets. The two are different things with different value drivers, and the price of one does not automatically move the other. That distinction is why the company-versus-token gap keeps resurfacing across Ripple’s 2026 story. Ripple can win institutional business, launch products, and deepen its corporate value without automatically delivering a direct benefit to XRP holders.

This separation is the foundation of the entire holder-payout question, because it means there is no existing structure, no dividend, no buyback mechanism, no holder-equity bridge, that currently connects Ripple’s corporate fortunes to the people who hold XRP. Any such benefit would require a deliberate corporate decision: Ripple choosing to extend something to holders of a token that is legally distinct from its stock. That is precisely what makes Garlinghouse’s “maybe” notable, because it gestures at the possibility of Ripple voluntarily building a connection that does not exist and is not required to exist. The community’s hope is that Ripple might someday decide to construct that bridge.

The reality is that no bridge exists today, none is planned, and the entire question is whether Ripple might ever choose to build one. Everything that follows, every imagined mechanism and every obstacle, flows from this single fact: a Ripple IPO would, by default, do nothing for XRP holders, because the token and the company are separate. Only an affirmative, deliberate choice by Ripple could change that. Until such a choice is announced, a holder payout remains speculation, not entitlement.

The mechanisms holders imagine Once the “maybe” spread, the community began filling in the blank with specific mechanisms, and it is worth laying them out, because they define the range of what “something special” could plausibly mean. The most discussed idea is preferential access to IPO shares, an arrangement in which verified long-term XRP holders, or users staking on the XRP Ledger, would be granted priority subscription rights to buy into a Ripple offering at favorable terms before the general public. This is the version that most directly answers the community’s wish, because it would let XRP holders transition, at least partly, into Ripple shareholders. It would turn token loyalty into an equity stake.

A second imagined mechanism is a long-term holding reward, a community-based structure that would give some benefit to holders who have kept XRP for a defined period, rewarding loyalty without necessarily handing over equity. A third, more technically ambitious idea is tokenized Ripple equity: a blockchain-based representation of Ripple stock made available to eligible token holders, which would use the very tokenization technology the industry is racing to build in order to bridge the gap between Ripple shares and XRP. Some in the community have also floated the notion of an “equity-token-bound” proof of entitlement, a digital claim linking XRP holding to some future right in Ripple. Each of these would, in its own way, construct the bridge between Ripple equity and XRP holders that currently does not exist.

The crucial thing to hold in mind is that all of them remain imagined, not announced. Garlinghouse named none of them; he declined, in fact, to endorse any specific structure when asked. They represent the community’s wish list of what “something special” might be, not a menu Ripple has offered. The distance between a fan’s plausible idea and a company’s actual program is considerable, especially when the imagined benefit touches securities law, global compliance, investor eligibility, and the legal separation between Ripple equity and XRP.

Why each mechanism is harder than it sounds The reason Garlinghouse spoke in hints instead of specifics is almost certainly that nearly every concrete version of a holder benefit collides with serious obstacles, and understanding those obstacles is essential to a realistic view. The largest is securities law, and it is a particularly sharp problem for XRP of all tokens. Linking a cryptocurrency’s holding to equity benefits raises exactly the kind of securities-law questions that defined Ripple’s long and costly legal battle, the years-long fight over whether XRP sales amounted to unregistered securities transactions. Building a formal bridge that rewards XRP holders with equity or equity-like rights risks recreating the very entanglement between the token and the company that Ripple spent years and enormous legal resources trying to separate.

The company would have to navigate that terrain with extreme care, because a poorly designed holder-benefit program could reintroduce the argument that XRP is a security tied to Ripple’s enterprise, which is the last thing Ripple wants. That is why the catalyst that matters more than the IPO is still statutory clarity from the CLARITY Act, not an undefined corporate reward. Federal clarity can strengthen XRP’s status without blurring the line between the token and Ripple equity. A holder-equity program, by contrast, could blur that line if designed carelessly.

Beyond securities law, the practical obstacles multiply. A preferential-share program would require verifying who is a genuine long-term holder, drawing cutoff lines that would inevitably be seen as arbitrary or unfair, and managing the identity and compliance machinery to do it at scale across a global, pseudonymous holder base. A holding-reward structure raises questions of how to fund it and how to avoid favoring large holders over small ones. Tokenized equity would face the full weight of securities regulation governing who can own and trade company stock, plus the technical and legal work of making a regulated equity instrument function on a blockchain.

Each mechanism, in other words, is not just a matter of Ripple deciding to be generous; it is a tangle of legal exposure, fairness problems, and operational complexity, any one of which could sink it. This is why the most dramatic interpretations of “special arrangement” are also the least likely. A sober reading has to weight the modest possibilities, a governance gesture, a symbolic recognition, or simply Ripple structuring its business so more value flows through XRP over time, far more heavily than the windfall the community imagined.

Why Ripple may not even go public soon The entire holder-benefit scenario is downstream of a prior question that often gets lost in the excitement: will Ripple even go public at all, and if so, when. On this, Garlinghouse has been consistent and notably unenthusiastic. He has repeatedly described an IPO as not a priority, and his reasoning is grounded in the current state of the public markets for crypto companies. He has pointed to the underwhelming performance of crypto-related public listings, citing peers whose post-listing stock has struggled, and noted reports that at least one major exchange had delayed its own listing plans.

His view, in short, is that the public markets have not treated Ripple’s peers well, and that there is little reason to rush into that environment. He has also made a positive case for staying private, arguing that it preserves flexibility, including, he joked, the freedom to speak openly without lawyers drafting every word. This is not the posture of a company on the verge of ringing the opening bell. It means the holder-benefit question is built on a foundation that is itself uncertain: a possible reward contingent on an IPO that the chief executive describes as neither planned nor imminent.

That is the sense in which the whole thing is a maybe attached to a maybe. For an XRP holder weighing what they might receive, this is the most important practical point, because even the most generous imaginable holder benefit is irrelevant unless and until Ripple actually decides to go public. By Garlinghouse’s own account, that decision is not on the calendar. The community’s hope therefore rests on two sequential uncertainties: first that Ripple goes public, and second that, having done so, it chooses to extend something to holders it is under no obligation to help.

Either link breaking is enough to make the whole scenario evaporate. That is why the IPO hint should not be treated like a near-term catalyst, even if it tells holders something about how Ripple thinks about its community. The comment matters as a signal of openness, but it does not change the current legal structure, the current IPO timeline, or the current token economics. XRP holders should separate those categories carefully.

The indirect benefit Ripple already provides Set against the speculation is Garlinghouse’s actual, stated position, which deserves a fair hearing because it is not a trivial argument: that XRP holders already benefit from Ripple’s existence, indirectly but intentionally. The foundation of this argument is a simple fact: Ripple is the largest single holder of XRP. That gives the company a stronger economic incentive than anyone else to increase the token’s value and adoption, because Ripple profits when XRP rises, just as holders do. Its incentives are genuinely aligned with holders, even without any formal program linking the two.

Every commercial partnership Ripple pursues, every payment corridor it opens, every institutional deal it closes, and every regulatory battle it fights is evaluated, at least in part, through the lens of how it drives XRP utility and liquidity. Garlinghouse’s framing is that this alignment is the real benefit, that Ripple’s entire strategy is built around making XRP the most useful, liquid, and trusted digital asset in payments and settlement, and that by growing the ecosystem it makes what holders own more valuable, even without a dividend or an equity link. That is where XRP’s actual utility remains central to the long-term case. The token’s real thesis has to rest on usage, liquidity, and settlement demand, not on implied ownership of Ripple.

NEW: JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo Finance and Ripple complete tokenized Treasury redemption test on XRP Ledger. Settlement took roughly 5 seconds compared to 3 to 5 business days on traditional rails pic.twitter.com/9Rkd3MkWF4

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 12, 2026 Garlinghouse has pointed to concrete examples of this posture, including Ripple’s backing of XRP treasury companies such as Evernorth, which is working to build a large XRP treasury business with Ripple’s support, an effort Garlinghouse frames as helping XRP holders, the XRP community, and Ripple shareholders at the same time. This argument has genuine merit and should not be dismissed as spin. The company’s commercial work plausibly does increase XRP’s utility and demand over time, which is a real, if diffuse, benefit to anyone holding the token. The counterpoint, and the reason the “maybe” resonated, is that many in the community find this indirect alignment insufficient.

They want a concrete share of Ripple’s corporate success, not an incentive structure that may or may not translate into token-price appreciation. That dissatisfaction is precisely the nerve Garlinghouse’s remark touched. His indirect-benefit argument is, in effect, his answer to it: you already benefit, just not in the direct way you want. Whether that answer satisfies holders depends on whether Ripple’s wins eventually become visible in XRP demand rather than simply in Ripple’s corporate valuation.

The downside nobody mentions: an IPO could hurt XRP Here is the part of the story that the bullish excitement almost entirely skips: a Ripple IPO is not unambiguously good for XRP, and there is a credible case that it could actively work against the token, at least in the near term. The first channel is competition for capital. Today, an institution that wants exposure to Ripple’s success has essentially one liquid way to get it: buy XRP, the token associated with the company’s ecosystem. If Ripple goes public, that changes.

Suddenly there is a direct way to own a piece of Ripple itself, a regulated equity that offers what a token cannot: potential dividends, audited financial transparency, ownership of the company’s actual assets and cash flows, and the compliance comfort of a listed stock. Faced with that choice, institutional capital that might have flowed into XRP as a proxy for Ripple could instead flow into Ripple stock, siphoning off the very institutional demand the XRP bull case depends on. The IPO, in this reading, would give the market a cleaner instrument for the Ripple thesis, and XRP could lose its role as the default vehicle for it. That is the uncomfortable side of where XRP trades while holders wait: the market wants direct token demand, not merely a story about Ripple’s corporate success.

The second channel is selling pressure from Ripple itself. As a private company, Ripple has long been criticized for selling XRP from its large escrow holdings, a persistent source of new supply. After an IPO, that pressure could intensify instead of ease, because a public company answers to Wall Street’s quarterly demands for cash flow and profitability. To satisfy those demands and bolster its financial reports, Ripple’s board could face strong incentives to monetize tens of billions of XRP from its escrow accounts in a more systematic and aggressive way, creating an invisible, long-term overhang on the token’s price.

None of this is certain, and a well-managed IPO could be handled in ways that limit these effects, but the point is that the community’s framing of an IPO as pure upside for holders is incomplete. The honest version acknowledges that going public is a double-edged sword for XRP. It could, in the bullish case, come bundled with a “special arrangement” that rewards holders, or it could, in the bearish case, drain attention and capital away from the token while increasing the supply pressure on it. Holders hoping for the first should at least weigh the second.

What it means for holders today So what should an XRP holder actually take from all of this, standing in the present with the token trading near a dollar and the “special arrangement” still nothing more than a hedged remark? The disciplined answer is to give the IPO hint the weight it actually carries, which is to say very little, and to keep attention on the catalysts that truly move XRP. A possible IPO reward is a weak basis for any decision, because it is a maybe attached to a maybe: an unplanned, undefined benefit contingent on an IPO that Ripple does not prioritize. It is better regarded as a distant possible upside not to be counted on than as a catalyst to position around.

The things that will actually determine XRP’s path are observable and concrete: whether the CLARITY Act passes and writes XRP’s commodity status into federal law, whether spot ETF flows compound or trickle, whether the network’s settlement usage grows enough to translate into real token demand against the escrow supply, and where Bitcoin drags the broader market. Those are the signals worth watching, and the IPO hint is not among them. This does not mean the remark is meaningless. It reveals something real about Ripple’s posture toward its community, a willingness to at least entertain the idea of connecting corporate success to holders, which is more than many companies would offer.

But revealing a posture is not the same as making a commitment, and the most useful thing a holder can do is to enjoy the signal for what it shows about Ripple’s attitude while declining to build any expectation on top of it. The community heard a promise. What Garlinghouse offered was a maybe, and in investing the difference is everything. An XRP holder is better served by evaluating the token on its actual merits, its use in payments, its regulatory position, its adoption, and its supply dynamics, than by speculating about an IPO reward that exists only as a hedged possibility.

That possibility is attached to an IPO that may never come, and that could, in some scenarios, hurt the token as much as help it. The hope is understandable. The discipline is to keep it in proportion. If Ripple ever announces a real program, holders can judge the terms then; until then, the “special arrangement” is a signal, not a strategy.

Frequently asked questions Did Ripple promise XRP holders a payout from its IPO? No. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said that “if and when” Ripple goes public, the company might do “something special” for XRP holders, then immediately added that it was “not in the immediate term.” That was a hedged “maybe” offered in response to a direct question, not a plan, a program, or a commitment, and he declined to endorse any specific mechanism such as a token buyback. The community amplified the remark into something close to a promise, but no payout has been announced, no mechanism has been described, and the comment was explicitly conditional on an IPO that Garlinghouse describes as not a priority.

Does holding XRP give me any ownership of Ripple? No. Ripple and XRP are legally and financially separate assets. Ripple is a private technology company that builds payment and liquidity products, some of which use the XRP Ledger. XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, a decentralized blockchain that Ripple does not control. Holding XRP grants no shares in Ripple, no dividends, no voting rights, and no claim on the company’s profits or assets.

What could a “special arrangement” actually look like? The mechanisms the community imagines include preferential access to Ripple IPO shares for verified long-term XRP holders, long-term holding rewards for those who keep XRP for a defined period, and tokenized Ripple equity made available to eligible holders. All of these are unannounced and remain speculation instead of anything Ripple has offered. Each also faces serious obstacles, especially securities law, because linking token holding to equity benefits raises exactly the questions Ripple fought during its long legal battle over XRP. More modest possibilities, such as a governance gesture or simply structuring the business so more value flows through XRP, are more realistic than a direct equity windfall.

Is Ripple actually going to have an IPO? It is uncertain, and Garlinghouse has repeatedly described going public as not a priority. He has cited the weak post-listing performance of crypto-company peers and reports of a major exchange delaying its own plans, and he has argued that staying private preserves flexibility. This matters because the entire holder-benefit question is downstream of an IPO happening at all. Even the most generous imaginable reward is irrelevant unless Ripple first decides to go public and then chooses to extend something to holders.

Could a Ripple IPO actually be bad for XRP? It could, and this is the part the bullish framing tends to skip. An IPO would give institutions a direct way to own Ripple through regulated stock that offers dividends, financial transparency, and ownership of company assets, potentially drawing capital that might otherwise have flowed into XRP as a proxy for Ripple. Separately, as a public company answerable to quarterly earnings expectations, Ripple could face stronger incentives to monetize its large XRP escrow holdings more aggressively, adding long-term selling pressure on the token. Going public is therefore a double-edged sword for XRP, with credible downside as well as the hoped-for upside, and holders should weigh both.

What should XRP holders actually focus on? On the observable catalysts that truly move the token instead of the IPO hint. Those include whether the CLARITY Act passes and codifies XRP’s commodity status, whether spot XRP ETF flows compound or stall, whether the network’s settlement usage grows into real token demand against the escrow supply, and the direction of Bitcoin and the broader market. The “special arrangement” remark is best treated as a small signal about Ripple’s posture toward its community, given minimal weight in any actual view of XRP’s prospects. Evaluating XRP on its real merits, utility, regulatory position, adoption, and supply, is far sounder than positioning around a hedged maybe.

This article is information, not investment advice. Prices, corporate plans, and statements reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. Brad Garlinghouse’s comments were conditional and did not constitute a commitment or a program. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP or any security. Verify current details from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.

Be greedy when others are fearful, right?

The past several months have not been kind to XRP. After it marked a new all-time high in mid-July 2025, it has been mostly downhill, losing over 70% of its value, dumping toward $1.00, being surpassed by BNB and USDC in terms of market cap, and registering six consecutive months in the red at one point.

Amid all of these adverse developments, some analysts have turned highly bearish on the asset. While the dominant belief is that XRP has reached its most crucial moment during this cycle, some, such as Ali Martinez, pointed to potential drops to the next crucial support levels at $0.80, $0.62, or $0.51 if the $1.00 floor gives in.

Glassnode warned that XRP token holders continue to realize more losses than profits, indicating intensifying selling pressure even among investors in the red. Even ChatGPT made some worrying predictions if the asset indeed flips $1.00 from support into resistance soon. But maybe such low sentiment is what is needed for XRP to turn things around.

Run Up Instead? Paradoxically, history shows that the markets rarely reward such consensus. In fact, Warren Buffett has said it best, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Extreme pessimism has frequently appeared near important turning points across the crypto market. BTC, ETH, and XRP have all experienced periods where sentiment collapsed and remained there for a while before major recoveries began. This is generally possible when weak hands exited, and long-term investors quietly accumulated.

For XRP, this accumulation appears to be coming from ETF investors, as the funds tracking its performance have seen a green-only streak of eight consecutive weeks, while the BTC and ETH ETFs have bled out heavily.

The recent sell-off also pushed several on-chain and technical metrics into historically oversold territory. Some analysts argue that XRP may be approaching a zone where risk-reward begins to improve, even if short-term volatility persists.

You may also like: Ripple (XRP) Boosts Global Blockchain Adoption With Over $70M in Donations XRP’s Slide to Sub-$1.00 Could Set Up ‘Risk-Reward’ Zone: Analyst XRP Selling Pressure Intensifies as Profit-to-Loss Ratio Reaches Multi-Year Low History is indeed on XRP’s side. Recall that the asset’s sentiment had plunged to similar levels in mid-June but skyrocketed by double digits within 24 hours as the analytics company Santiment attributed that rally to the deteriorating investor behavior.

July Agrees Current data show that XRP is on track to close June with a decline of over 20%, its worst monthly performance since February 2025. Data from CryptoRank suggests that this aligns with previous performances, as June has been a predominantly bearish month for the asset.

On the contrary stands July. XRP has closed each of the past six editions in the green, showing some impressive gains. Five out of the six have seen double-digit price increases, including massive 45%+ pumps in 2020 and 2023. The median gain for July stands at close to 11%.

XRP Monthly Returns on CryptoRank Tags:

The CLARITY Act, currently under discussion in the United States, is gaining close attention in crypto markets due to its potential to deliver a much clearer regulatory framework for digital assets. Should the bill become law, many industry observers believe it could significantly reduce the legal uncertainty that has long deterred institutional investors from entering the space.

Why institutional capital is watching Market sources tracking industry data suggest that the CLARITY Act could be a game changer for the US crypto sector. According to this perspective, the bill may eliminate one of the major regulatory hurdles preventing American pension funds—which collectively manage around $56 trillion in assets—from accessing digital assets. These funds typically avoid assets without clear legal status due to strict compliance obligations.

At the heart of the debate lies the question of whether digital assets should be classified as securities or commodities. This lack of clarity keeps institutions from allocating capital to cryptos like XRP, presenting both legal and custodial challenges for major investors.

Glossary: The CLARITY Act is a legislative proposal in the US aiming to clarify the regulatory framework for digital assets. Its main purpose is to define which assets will be treated as securities and which as commodities, easing the compliance burden for market participants.

If the CLARITY Act takes effect, analysts believe it could establish a comprehensive framework for digital assets and bolster the standing of assets such as XRP among institutional investors.

Liquidity squeezes move into focus One notable aspect for XRP is that not all of its circulating supply is actively traded. Although the total supply is high, only a limited fraction is exchanged on markets. A substantial portion remains in the hands of long-term holders, is stored in institutional wallets, or is locked in escrow accounts, narrowing the readily accessible supply for trading.

This limited tradable supply means that even a modest influx of institutional capital into XRP, spurred by regulatory clarity, could rapidly tighten available liquidity. Market observers note that if demand outstrips accessible supply, upward price pressure could escalate swiftly.

Despite XRP’s large total supply, the actively traded amount remains restricted, so any surge in institutional demand could sharply reduce liquidity in the short term.

Time pressure mounts in Washington Meanwhile, reports indicate Congress is picking up the pace on the bill. Republican lawmakers are pushing to advance the CLARITY Act before the August recess, driven by a crowded legislative calendar that leaves little room for delay.

Once senators return to work on July 13, Congress will have only about 20 working days to deliberate, vote on the bill, and come to an agreement with the House of Representatives on the final version. This tight window is putting additional pressure on lawmakers to give the bill the necessary attention.

Within the digital asset industry, the CLARITY Act is viewed as one of the most significant regulatory moves in the US in recent years. Its passage could unlock far broader institutional participation—and with it, the prospect of reducing the legal fog that has hovered over the market, potentially making XRP a standout asset in the coming period.

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.

Due to the high levels of leverage that remain in the market, the recent decline in the value of Ripple [XRP] has resulted in a large-scale derivatives reset. At its peak during this period, nearly $3 million in long positions were liquidated, forcing bullish traders out of their exposure.

Moreover, Funding Rates have turned sharply negative, reflecting strong bearish conviction about XRP’s future price action. Additionally, the Open Interest (OI) dropped from approximately $1.18 billion to approximately $1.04 billion.

These factors indicate that the removal of leverage-driven selling pressure by speculative excess is beginning. Although the stable Binance reserves show that spot holders are still unwilling to sell aggressively.

Source: CryptoQuant If OI begins to rebuild along with the improving funding rate, then XRP may begin to trend upward towards a healthier recovery. However, if these trends do not start occurring simultaneously, then bearish momentum will likely continue.

XRP enters a historically oversold zone As long-term declines continue for XRP, it is possible for the overall market to enter historically extreme downside risk conditions as sellers continue to outpace buyers.

Additionally, the prolonged decline has caused the Sharpe Z-Score to drop deeper into negative territory. These levels mirror the extreme reading before the November 2024 breakout and the July 2025 rally.

Source: CryptoQuant Even so, XRP remains near $1.03, well below its 200-day Moving Average, confirming buyers have not yet regained control of the broader trend. This combination suggests downside momentum may be becoming exhausted rather than accelerating further.

If fresh spot demand returns and price reclaims key technical levels, the current reset could evolve into another recovery phase. Otherwise, XRP may continue consolidating until stronger buying confirms the historical signal.

Final Summary XRP deleveraging is reducing speculative excess, but stronger spot demand remains essential for a sustained recovery. XRP’s historical oversold signals suggested that a downside was stretched, yet bullish confirmation still depends on renewed buying pressure.

The crypto market slipped 0.83% to $2.07 trillion as selling pressure returned across major assets. Bitcoin hovered below $60,000, while Ethereum traded near $1,557 after large holders increased selling. 

XRP price held around $1.05, supported by stronger ETF demand. Fresh flow data showed XRP ETF products gaining inflows, while Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs continued to lose capital during a weak market session on June 26.

XRP ETF Inflows Outpace Bitcoin and Ethereum Funds The positive bright spot for U.S. spot crypto funds was XRP ETF products. XRP tokens attracted more interest from investors, with bigger holdings seeing redemptions.

The total daily net inflows for U.S.-listed XRP spot ETFs reached $15.63 million on June 26. This added to the already existing net inflows of $1.47 billion into all XRP ETFs.

XRP’s monthly performance was also positive. Over 30 days, XRP funds added $60.61 million in net inflows. This was in contrast to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, which both saw monthly outflows.

Source: Sosovalue data Bitwise’s XRP fund led the daily inflow table. The fund attracted $11.66 million and held $293.49 million in net assets. Next came Franklin’s XRPZ, which had $3.97 million in inflows and $235.20 million in assets.

Canary’s XRPC was also a significant investor with $234.97 million in assets. Grayscale’s GXRP was valued at $57.60, whereas 21Shares’ TOXR was still in the red on a cumulative basis.

But XRP remains far behind the bigger ETF markets in terms of trading volume. Over all, the value traded in XRP spot ETFs totaled $22.04 million. Net assets stood at $934.26 million, equal to 1.44% of XRP’s market capitalization.

Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs Extend Seven-Day Outflow Streak Bitcoin & Ethereum ETFs continued to struggle, with investors withdrawing from leading funds. According to SoSoValue, both categories posted a seventh straight day of net outflows on June 26.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs experienced daily net outflows of $444.51 million from the U.S. market. Investors pulled $4.41 billion out of Bitcoin funds during the 31-day period. Net inflows were still high over the 12-month period, however, at $51.61 billion.

U.S. Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs See Seventh Straight Day of Outflows

According to SoSoValue, on June 26 (ET), U.S. spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs both recorded their seventh consecutive day of net outflows. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a total net outflow of $445 million, while… pic.twitter.com/vm3nFGOnUQ

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 27, 2026

For the whole day, all of the money flowed out of BlackRock’s IBIT. However, IBIT was the top Bitcoin ETF by assets. The fund has $44.42 billion in net assets and $60.77 billion in cumulative inflows.

Fidelity’s FBTC trailed with $10.44 billion in assets. The Grayscale GBTC was down overall with $27.14 billion of cumulative outflows. But there was no net redemptions in the day for GBTC.

Ethereum ETFs experienced less demand, but losses were not as severe as Bitcoin’s. Daily outflows of spot Ethereum ETFs hit $12.85 million in the U.S. Ethereum has lost more than $610.61 million over the course of 30 days.

BlackRock’s ETHA continued to be the biggest Ethereum fund. It had $4.27 billion in net assets and $11.08 billion in cumulative inflows. Grayscale’s ETHE continued to stay in the red by recording an outflow of $5.33 billion in cumulative outflows.

Bitcoin Still Leads Assets as XRP Gains Fresh Investor Demand XRP is currently the leader in the short-term flow race, whereas Bitcoin has the crown in size. The net assets of U.S. Bitcoin ETFs totaled $72.82 billion. They traded a total of $2.54 billion, which is significantly higher than XRP’s day-to-day activity.

The net assets of Ethereum ETFs totaled $8.38 billion. This was 4.42% of Ethereum’s total market capitalization. Bitcoin ETF assets equaled 6.08% of Bitcoin’s market value.

The new figures reveal a stark difference in investor action. Bitcoin and Ethereum funds are seeing withdrawals, and XRP ETF products are gaining new demand. Nevertheless, Bitcoin is the biggest and most flow market for ETFs.

Near term, traders are watching Bitcoin’s $58,000 support level. Failure to move below this zone will give room for the price to move to $54,000. Any recovery above $61,800 could help ease overall crypto ETF sentiment.

Highest IQ Holder Backs an XRP Supercycle as 3 Bullish Signals Hit at Once

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 President Monica Long is scheduled to speak at an upcoming event in Seoul, South Korea, and the community is anticipating her appearance.

According to a tweet from the XRP Seoul X account, the XRP Seoul 2026 event, hosted by XRP Ledger Korea, takes place on October 3 during KBW (Korea Blockchain Week), connecting XRP holders, builders, and ecosystem projects worldwide. Ripple President Monica Long is expected to participate in the event.

We're honored to welcome @MonicaLongSF, President of @Ripple.

Monica leads Ripple's Business, Product and Engineering teams, building Ripple into a one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value. Since joining in 2013, she's played a pivotal role in driving the company… pic.twitter.com/TCbHhU8up4

— XRP Seoul 2026 🇰🇷 (@XRPSEOUL) June 28, 2026 Long leads Ripple's Business, Product and Engineering teams, building Ripple into a one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value. Since joining, she has played a pivotal role in driving the company at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi. Given this standing, the Ripple president remains a respected authority on XRP, the future of payments and what comes next for the ecosystem.

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The participation by the Ripple President matters, given that Korea has long been one of XRP's most active speculative markets. While Bitcoin and Ethereum usually dominate global exchange activity, Korean traders have most often pushed XRP into the top volume rankings during periods of increased interest, often before volatility spikes.

At the moment, XRP is the second most traded asset by volume on Upbit Korea, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of both trading volume and customer base.

XRP gains utilityXRP is gaining further utility as Korea's financial technology transitions to blockchain-based solutions. Local developers, startups, and finance-focused teams are using the XRP Ledger (XRPL) infrastructure to create solutions with practical use cases.

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In this light, the Korea Fintech Innovation Program (KFIP) 2026 has become Korea's largest XRPL-native accelerator program to date.

Out of 270 applicants, 12 finalist teams were selected to ship the next chapter of finance on XRPL. XRP Ledger Korea took to X to announce the winners of the KFIP 2026, consisting of five teams.

Ripple President Monica Long is set to appear at XRP Seoul 2026, adding a major company voice to one of Asia’s key XRP-focused events.

Summary

Monica Long’s Seoul appearance comes as Korea remains one of XRP’s most active trading markets. XRP Seoul will connect holders, builders, and projects during Korea Blockchain Week on October 3. Ripple’s Korea ties now span custody, tokenized bonds, XRPL projects, and local developer programs. The event will take place on October 3 during Korea Blockchain Week. It will bring together XRP holders, XRP Ledger builders, ecosystem projects, and companies working on blockchain finance.

Monica Long joins XRP Seoul lineup The XRP Seoul account said it was “honored to welcome” Long to the event. The post described her as a leader across Ripple’s business, product, and engineering teams.

Long has worked at Ripple since 2013. The event page says she has helped build the company into a “one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value.”

We're honored to welcome @MonicaLongSF, President of @Ripple.

Monica leads Ripple's Business, Product and Engineering teams, building Ripple into a one-stop shop to move, manage, hold and tokenize value. Since joining in 2013, she's played a pivotal role in driving the company… pic.twitter.com/TCbHhU8up4

— XRP Seoul 2026 🇰🇷 (@XRPSEOUL) June 28, 2026 Her role gives the event added weight for XRP supporters. Ripple remains closely linked to XRP through its holdings, payments work, stablecoin strategy, custody services, and use of XRP Ledger infrastructure.

The appearance also comes as Korea Blockchain Week lists Long among its 2026 speaker lineup. The main KBW conference runs from September 30 to October 1 in Seoul.

Korea remains a major XRP market South Korea has long been one of XRP’s most active retail markets. In a recent Korea and Japan trading review, XRP trading on Upbit and other Korean platforms stood out during several periods of strong market activity.

In May, XRP’s Korean won pair also led Upbit volumes after Hana Bank moved to buy a large stake in Dunamu, the operator of Upbit. As previously reported, XRP outpaced Bitcoin and Ethereum in 24-hour volume on the exchange at that time.

That trading pattern explains why Seoul is a key place for an XRP event. Korean traders often drive sharp moves in XRP volume during market cycles.

XRP Seoul 2026 says it will focus on XRP Ledger growth, institutional adoption, and real-world use cases. The official event site says it expects more than 3,000 attendees and over 100 companies.

XRPL activity expands in Korea Ripple’s work in Korea goes beyond token trading. In May, Ripple Custody signed a deal with Kyobo Life Insurance to pilot near real-time settlement of tokenized Korean government bonds.

As previously reported, the pilot uses Ripple Custody to hold, transfer, and settle tokenized bonds. The project also explores stablecoin payment rails through RLUSD.

Local XRPL groups are also supporting developer activity. XRPL Korea lists the Korea Financial Innovation Program 2026 as a three-month path for teams building blockchain-based finance products.

That effort gives XRP Seoul a builder angle, not only a market angle. The event will likely give projects a stage to show how they use XRPL for payments, tokenization, custody, and other financial products.

XRP utility remains under debate Long’s appearance comes as XRP holders continue to question how Ripple’s business growth connects to the token. Recent coverage has tracked Ripple’s moves toward banking, stablecoins, custody, and deeper ties with traditional finance.

A recent analysis of Ripple’s bank strategy said RLUSD may benefit first from a trust charter and Fed master account path. Another SWIFT strategy report noted that Ripple now appears more focused on working with bank messaging systems than replacing them.

That leaves XRP’s direct role under close review. Some holders want clearer proof that Ripple’s new deals create lasting demand for XRP, not only for Ripple products.

XRP Seoul gives Long a public stage to address that gap. Her comments may help show how Ripple sees XRP, RLUSD, custody, tokenized assets, and Korean market growth fitting into the same plan.

Ripple settled a tokenized Treasury with JPMorgan in five seconds, expanded a stablecoin deal across Latin America, and powered remittances to 170 million people. The catch for XRP holders: the cash leg in deal after deal is RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, not XRP. Here is whether the token they hold is being quietly sidelined by the company built around it.

Summary

Ripple’s biggest recent wins, a five-second tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan and Mastercard, a stablecoin expansion across Latin America, and a major remittance deal, increasingly use RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, as the cash leg rather than XRP. RLUSD crossed $1 billion in market value quickly and is becoming the settlement asset enterprises actually want, raising the question of whether it is taking the role XRP was built to play. The pattern reflects a real tension: Ripple the company keeps winning institutional deals, while XRP the token stays pinned near a dollar, beneath every major moving average. The bullish counterargument is that Ripple is the largest XRP holder with aligned incentives, that RLUSD and XRP serve different functions, and that ledger activity can still benefit XRP indirectly. For holders, the question is whether XRP’s value will accrue from network usage and catalysts like the CLARITY Act and ETF flows, or whether RLUSD will capture the settlement demand XRP was meant to capture. In June 2026, Ripple completed something that should have been a milestone for XRP. Working with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and the tokenization firm Ondo Finance, it settled the cross-border redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund across banks on the XRP Ledger, and the blockchain leg finalized in under five seconds, against the one to three business days the same transaction can take on traditional rails. It was a genuine showcase of what Ripple’s technology can do, the kind of institutional validation the XRP community has predicted for years.

NEW: JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo Finance and Ripple complete tokenized Treasury redemption test on XRP Ledger. Settlement took roughly 5 seconds compared to 3 to 5 business days on traditional rails pic.twitter.com/9Rkd3MkWF4

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) June 12, 2026 And yet there was a detail in it that has become the defining unease for XRP holders: the cash leg of that settlement used RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, not XRP. The same pattern has repeated across Ripple’s other recent wins. A partnership expanding stablecoin settlement across Latin America runs on a regulated peso-backed stablecoin issued on the XRP Ledger and integrated with Ripple’s infrastructure, while a major remittance deal reaching 170 million people uses RLUSD as the primary settlement asset. Deal after deal, Ripple keeps winning, and deal after deal, the asset doing the actual settling is increasingly a stablecoin, while XRP trades near a dollar and change as though none of it is happening.

This is the question that has moved to the center of the XRP story, and it is a fair and uncomfortable one: if every Ripple win runs on RLUSD rather than XRP, is the token being quietly sidelined by the very company built around it? The concern is not baseless, because it touches the oldest puzzle in the XRP thesis, the gap between Ripple’s corporate success and XRP’s token price, and gives it a specific, mechanical explanation. But it is also not the whole story, because there are real counterarguments about why RLUSD and XRP are not simply competitors, why Ripple’s incentives remain aligned with holders, and how ledger activity can still benefit the token.

This piece works through both sides honestly. It lays out the pattern of RLUSD showing up where holders expected XRP, explains what RLUSD is and why enterprises prefer it for settlement, examines whether the stablecoin is cannibalizing XRP’s intended role, presents the bullish case that the two assets are complementary, and arrives at a grounded view of what holders should actually take from it. The goal is neither to stoke the fear nor to dismiss it, but to give holders an accurate read on whether their token is being left behind.

The pattern: RLUSD where holders expected XRP Start with the pattern itself, because it is real and worth seeing clearly across the recent run of Ripple announcements. The flagship example is the tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance. For years, the XRP pitch held that cross-border institutional settlement was exactly what XRP was built for, the bridge asset that would let value move between currencies and institutions in seconds. When Ripple finally delivered a marquee demonstration of that capability, settling a tokenized Treasury redemption across borders and banks in under five seconds, the XRP Ledger provided the rails, but RLUSD provided the cash leg.

That detail matters because it changes what the event proved. It proved that the XRP Ledger can support serious institutional flows, with names that compliance departments recognize and a settlement speed legacy rails cannot match. But it did not prove that XRP the asset sits at the center of the payment, because the money leg moved through a stablecoin rather than the volatile token. As previously reported, Ripple’s tokenized Treasury settlement with JPMorgan showed that the ledger can win important business before the token captures meaningful demand.

The same shape recurs elsewhere. Ripple expanded a payments partnership in which a regulated peso-backed stablecoin is issued on the XRP Ledger and integrated into Ripple’s payment infrastructure to support enterprise stablecoin settlement across Latin America. Ripple also backed Flutterwave in a round that valued the African payments company at $3.2 billion, with RLUSD positioned for use across payment rails that reach a very large user base. In each case, the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s infrastructure become more relevant, but the settlement asset is a stablecoin.

Across these deals, the consistent feature is that the XRP Ledger, the blockchain Ripple built and that XRP is native to, is doing real and valuable work, but the asset moving through it as money is increasingly a stablecoin rather than XRP. This is what gives the holder concern its force: it is not a single anomalous deal but a repeated pattern in which Ripple’s institutional wins showcase the ledger and the company’s technology while routing the actual settlement value through RLUSD or another stablecoin. For holders who bought XRP on the thesis that institutional settlement demand would drive token demand, watching that settlement demand flow through a stablecoin instead is a legitimate cause for unease. The first honest step is simply to acknowledge that the pattern is real.

What RLUSD is and why enterprises prefer it To judge whether this pattern is a problem, you have to understand what RLUSD is and why enterprises keep choosing it, because the answer explains the dynamic without requiring any conspiracy against XRP. RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady value of $1, backed by reserves, and issued on the XRP Ledger and other chains. It crossed $1 billion in market value quickly after launch, a sign of real demand, and it has become the asset Ripple increasingly puts forward as the cash leg in its enterprise settlements.

The reason enterprises prefer a stablecoin for the money side of a transaction is straightforward and has nothing to do with any view about XRP. Businesses settling real-world value need price stability. When a company moves money across borders, it wants the amount it sends to equal the amount that arrives, with no exposure to price swings in between. XRP, like any freely traded cryptocurrency, fluctuates in price, which makes it difficult to use as the unit in which an enterprise wants to denominate and hold a settlement, even if it can still work as a bridge for moving value quickly.

A stablecoin solves this by holding a fixed dollar value, so the enterprise can settle in something that behaves like the dollars it already thinks in. This is why, across the industry and not just at Ripple, stablecoins have become the dominant on-chain settlement instrument: they combine the speed and programmability of crypto with the price stability that commerce requires. RLUSD is Ripple’s entry into that category, and its growing use in Ripple’s deals reflects the same market logic that has made stablecoins central everywhere. For readers who want the basics, how RLUSD holds its dollar peg is the starting point for understanding why enterprises gravitate toward it.

The same logic explains why exchange and liquidity integrations matter. When RLUSD is listed with XRP pairs and broader access, the stablecoin becomes easier to move, price, and route through the infrastructure Ripple wants enterprises to use. That helps Ripple’s payments stack, and it can deepen activity on the XRP Ledger, but it still does not mean every dollar of settlement creates direct XRP demand. The holder question is what remains for XRP once the stablecoin has taken the stable cash role.

Understanding this matters because it reframes the concern. RLUSD is not showing up in Ripple’s settlements simply because Ripple is trying to sideline XRP; it is showing up because enterprises asked for a stable settlement asset and Ripple built one to give them. That is a rational business decision for Ripple and a useful product decision for institutions. The harder question is whether that useful product decision narrows the value-accrual path that XRP holders were counting on.

Is RLUSD cannibalizing XRP’s role? This is the crux of the matter, and it deserves to be stated plainly: there is a real argument that RLUSD is taking the settlement role XRP was originally meant to play. The classic XRP thesis cast the token as the bridge asset for cross-border value transfer, the thing that would sit in the middle of international settlements, moving value between currencies in seconds and capturing demand as global payment volume flowed through it. Stablecoins complicate that thesis directly, because a dollar stablecoin can perform much of the cross-border settlement function that XRP was built for, moving value quickly and programmably while also offering the price stability XRP cannot. If enterprises can settle in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, getting the speed of the ledger without the volatility of the token, then the specific demand driver that was supposed to accrue to XRP may instead accrue to the stablecoin.

This is the structural worry beneath the holder concern, and it is not easily waved away. The bull case for XRP has long depended on the idea that Ripple’s growing settlement business would translate into demand for the token, but if the settlement business increasingly runs on RLUSD, that translation weakens. Ripple’s institutional infrastructure could keep growing impressively, opening corridors and closing deals, while the value of that growth flows through stablecoins and fiat instead of driving XRP token demand. That would leave the familiar gap between corporate progress and token price not just intact but mechanically explained.

The token could end up as the rails, valuable to the system but not the asset that captures the economic value moving across it. This is the version of events that should genuinely concern holders, and it is why the RLUSD pattern is more than a cosmetic detail. It points to a possible future in which XRP’s network succeeds, Ripple thrives, RLUSD becomes a major settlement asset, and XRP the token still struggles to convert all of that activity into sustained demand because the demand has a stablecoin to flow into instead. That is also why the older question of XRP’s bridge-asset role needs to be revisited rather than repeated as if nothing has changed.

There is a broader parallel here with other infrastructure tokens. A network can be useful without its native token absorbing the full value of that usefulness, especially when users can interact with the network through stable assets, tokenized deposits, or application-level instruments. XRP holders have already seen this in miniature: the ledger gets institutional proof points, Ripple gets business wins, and XRP gets fees, reserves, or optional routing rather than obvious direct demand. Whether that is enough depends on scale, and that scale has not yet shown up in the price.

The bullish case: complementary, not competing The other side of this debate is serious and deserves a full hearing, because the framing of RLUSD versus XRP as a zero-sum contest may be too simple. The first counterargument is that RLUSD and XRP serve different functions and can coexist productively. A stablecoin is the cash leg, the stable unit in which value is denominated and held. XRP, in the bridge role, can still serve as the connective asset that moves value between different currencies and stablecoins, the neutral intermediary in a world where many different fiat-backed stablecoins exist and need to be exchanged.

In this view, a proliferation of stablecoins actually increases the need for a neutral bridge asset to move between them, and XRP could capture that role precisely because it is not tied to any single currency. RLUSD handles the dollar leg, MXNB handles the peso leg, and other stablecoins can handle other currencies or jurisdictions. XRP can then sit between those assets when liquidity is fragmented, routing value across the ledger’s exchange and payments infrastructure. That is a more modest thesis than “XRP becomes the cash leg of global settlement,” but it is not an irrelevant one.

The second counterargument concerns incentives. Ripple is the largest single holder of XRP, which means the company has a powerful, built-in economic reason to drive the token’s value and usage that does not depend on any promise. Every corridor Ripple opens, every institution it onboards, and every unit of activity it brings to the XRP Ledger can eventually matter to XRP if that activity creates fees, reserves, routing, liquidity depth, or bridge demand. From this angle, Ripple building a successful stablecoin is not a betrayal of XRP holders but an expansion of the ecosystem XRP sits inside.

Even RLUSD, issued on the XRP Ledger, can support XRP indirectly by increasing ledger activity and making the network more useful to institutions. That is the strongest version of the complementary thesis: stablecoins bring institutions onto the rail, and once they are there, XRP has more chances to serve as liquidity, routing, or bridge infrastructure. The weakness is timing and certainty. Indirect value can take years to show up, and investors do not price “maybe someday” the same way they price direct, measurable demand today.

The third point is that XRP’s strongest catalysts were never really about being the settlement cash leg in the first place. The most powerful drivers of XRP’s potential value, regulatory clarity from the CLARITY Act, compounding ETF inflows, and broad adoption of the ledger, operate largely independent of whether RLUSD or XRP is the cash leg in any given deal. On this reading, holders fixating only on the RLUSD-versus-XRP question are watching one important variable, but not the only variable. The better question is whether the total system being built around XRP Ledger becomes large enough that XRP’s indirect roles finally matter.

The value-accrual problem at the heart of it Step back and the RLUSD debate is really a specific instance of the deepest question in the entire XRP story, the one that has defined the token through 2026: how, exactly, does value accrue to XRP? A blockchain network can succeed enormously while the token native to it struggles if the activity on the network does not translate into sustained demand for the token. This is the puzzle XRP holders have lived with all year, watching Ripple rack up settlements, stablecoin launches, banking moves, and enterprise deals while the token stayed pinned near a dollar beneath every major moving average. The RLUSD pattern sharpens this puzzle by identifying a concrete reason the translation might be failing.

If the settlement value that was supposed to flow into XRP flows into RLUSD instead, then network success and token demand decouple in exactly the way the price action suggests. That is why the issue is bigger than one JPMorgan test or one Flutterwave deal. It is about whether XRP captures the economic value of the ledger it secures and powers, or whether it becomes a necessary but low-fee native asset beneath higher-value instruments. In previous coverage, this was the same basic dilemma behind the company-versus-token gap up close: Ripple can become more valuable without XRP necessarily moving in lockstep.

The honest framing is that XRP’s range-bound behavior is less a mystery than a predictable feature of how value accrues, or fails to accrue, to a token whose network can succeed without it. The waiting ends only when usage and token demand finally converge, and that convergence requires specific things to happen. Settlement volume needs to become large enough that fees, reserves, routing, and ecosystem use begin to matter against the enormous XRP supply locked in escrow. ETF flows also need to compound instead of trickle, while a regulatory catalyst like the CLARITY Act needs to cross the line to pull institutional money off the sidelines.

RLUSD’s rise is relevant because it bears on the first of those channels, the settlement-volume channel, by raising the possibility that volume accrues to the stablecoin instead of the token. But it is only one of several channels, and the others, ETF demand and regulatory clarity, could drive XRP regardless of what settles Ripple’s deals. That is why the catalyst that drives XRP regardless still matters to holders even if RLUSD keeps winning the cash-leg role. The realistic synthesis is that the RLUSD pattern is a genuine headwind to one specific version of the XRP value-accrual thesis, the bridge-asset-settlement version, while leaving the regulatory-unlock and ETF-demand versions largely intact.

What holders should take from it So should XRP holders worry about RLUSD, and if so, how much? The grounded answer is that the concern is legitimate but should be held in proportion, neither dismissed nor allowed to dominate. The legitimate part is that RLUSD genuinely does weaken the specific thesis that institutional settlement demand would flow into XRP. In deal after deal, that demand is flowing into the stablecoin instead, and holders who bought XRP primarily on the bridge-asset-settlement story should update on that evidence instead of ignoring it.

If your entire case for XRP rested on the idea that Ripple’s settlement business would mechanically drive token demand, the RLUSD pattern is a real challenge to that case and worth taking seriously. Pretending the token is the cash leg when it increasingly is not would be wishful thinking. The question is no longer whether Ripple is winning, because it clearly is. The question is whether XRP captures enough of those wins to justify the token thesis on its own terms.

The proportion part is that the bridge-asset-settlement story was never the only pillar of the XRP thesis, and arguably not even the strongest one. The catalysts most capable of moving XRP, statutory clarity from the CLARITY Act and the institutional ETF demand it could unlock, operate largely independent of whether RLUSD or XRP settles any given transaction. Ripple’s status as the largest XRP holder also keeps its incentives aligned with the token even as it builds RLUSD. The stablecoin may be the product enterprises want now, but XRP remains the native asset inside the ecosystem those enterprises are entering.

The most useful posture for a holder is therefore to treat the RLUSD pattern as important information about where one channel of demand is going, while keeping attention on the channels that matter more: regulatory progress, ETF flows, and whether ledger activity overall, RLUSD included, grows large enough to support the token through fees, reserves, routing, and ecosystem demand. For price-focused readers, what the gap means for price is the practical version of the same question. If XRP keeps failing to convert Ripple’s wins into token demand, the chart will continue to reflect that. If regulatory clarity, ETF inflows, and ledger usage finally converge, RLUSD may look less like a replacement and more like the stablecoin that helped bring institutions onto the rail.

The deepest truth here is that XRP’s fate depends on the convergence of usage and token demand, and RLUSD is one factor among several bearing on that convergence. It is a headwind to one pillar instead of the collapse of the whole case. Holders should worry enough to watch it closely and to be honest about which version of the XRP thesis it undercuts, but not so much that they lose sight of the larger catalysts that will ultimately determine whether the token finally breaks its range.

Frequently asked questions What is RLUSD? RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady value of $1, backed by reserves, and issued on the XRP Ledger and other blockchains. It crossed $1 billion in market value quickly after launch, reflecting real demand, and Ripple increasingly puts it forward as the cash leg, the stable settlement asset, in its enterprise deals. Because it holds a fixed dollar value instead of fluctuating like XRP, RLUSD is suited to the role of denominating and settling real-world value, which is why it has become central to Ripple’s institutional settlement business and to the debate about what that leaves for XRP.

Why do Ripple’s deals use RLUSD instead of XRP? Because enterprises settling real-world value need price stability, and a stablecoin provides it while XRP does not. When a business moves money across borders, it wants the amount it sends to equal the amount that arrives, with no exposure to price swings in between. XRP fluctuates in price, which makes it useful as a fast bridge for moving value but difficult as the unit an enterprise wants to hold and settle in. RLUSD holds a fixed dollar value, so enterprises can settle in something that behaves like the dollars they already use.

Is RLUSD replacing XRP? Not exactly, though it is taking part of the role XRP was originally pitched for. The classic XRP thesis cast the token as the bridge asset for cross-border settlement, and a dollar stablecoin can perform much of that settlement function while also offering price stability XRP lacks, so RLUSD does compete with one version of XRP’s intended purpose. The counterargument is that the two are complementary: RLUSD handles the dollar cash leg, while XRP can serve as the neutral bridge that moves value between many different currencies and stablecoins. A world of many stablecoins may actually increase the need for a neutral bridge asset, a role XRP could fill.

Does RLUSD’s success hurt XRP holders? It weakens one specific pillar of the XRP bull case, the idea that Ripple’s settlement business would mechanically drive XRP token demand, because that settlement demand increasingly flows into RLUSD instead. Holders who bought XRP primarily on that bridge-asset-settlement story should take the pattern seriously. However, RLUSD runs on the XRP Ledger, generating activity, fees, reserves, and ecosystem growth that can indirectly support XRP, and Ripple, as the largest XRP holder, keeps its incentives aligned with the token. The stronger XRP catalysts, regulatory clarity and ETF demand, operate largely independent of which asset settles a given deal, so RLUSD is a headwind to one pillar instead of the collapse of the whole case.

What actually drives XRP’s value then? XRP’s value depends on the convergence of network usage and token demand, which requires specific things to happen. Settlement and ecosystem activity must become large enough that fees, reserves, routing, and demand begin to matter against the large XRP supply locked in escrow. Spot ETF inflows also need to compound, and a regulatory catalyst like the CLARITY Act needs to cross the line to pull institutional money off the sidelines. These channels, particularly the regulatory unlock and ETF demand, operate largely regardless of whether RLUSD or XRP settles any individual transaction.

Should I sell XRP because of RLUSD? This article does not give investment advice, and that decision depends on your own analysis and circumstances. What the analysis offers is a framework: RLUSD truly weakens the bridge-asset-settlement version of the XRP thesis, so if that was your primary reason for holding, the pattern is a real challenge worth weighing honestly. But it leaves the regulatory-clarity and ETF-demand versions of the thesis largely intact, and Ripple’s incentives remain aligned with XRP as its largest holder. The proportionate response is to watch the RLUSD trend closely and be honest about which pillar it undercuts, while keeping the larger catalysts in view instead of reacting to a single factor in isolation.

This article is information, not investment advice. Partnership details, settlement mechanics, market values, and corporate plans reflect reporting available as of June 28, 2026, and can change quickly. The relationship between RLUSD and XRP is an evolving and debated topic. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell XRP, RLUSD, or any asset. Verify current details from primary sources and consider your own circumstances before making any decision.

Table of contents

XRP is at $1.05. Flat-ish on the day. Down almost 8% on the week. Still clinging to $1 (live XRP price on CoinGecko).

But the price is not the most interesting thing happening to XRP right now. The most interesting thing is a fight. Ripple’s CEO just publicly blamed one of Bitcoin’s biggest names for hurting the entire crypto market. And honestly? He has a point.

Let me break it down.

The feud: Garlinghouse vs Saylor Brad Garlinghouse runs Ripple, the company behind XRP. This week he went on the record and pointed a finger straight at Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

His argument: Strategy’s preferred-stock funding model, the financial machine Saylor built to buy Bitcoin, is “financial engineering” that distracted the market and ultimately hurt crypto. His evidence? STRC, one of those Strategy securities, just slid to a record low. And as we covered, Strategy’s stock has now fallen below the value of its own Bitcoin. The machine is sputtering.

Now, keep in mind the obvious: Garlinghouse runs a Bitcoin rival. He has a reason to take shots. But that does not mean he is wrong. Strategy’s funding model genuinely is under stress, its premium has inverted, and the broader market did get caught up in the “buy Bitcoin with leverage” narrative that is now unwinding. So this is a self-interested jab that also happens to land.

Why this matters for XRP Here is the connection. Garlinghouse is drawing a line between two philosophies. On one side, Saylor’s leverage-and-financial-engineering approach. On the other, Ripple pitching XRP as actual utility, real-world payments, institutional rails, regulated products. The subtext: XRP is the grown-up in the room.

Whether you buy that or not, it is a deliberate positioning move at a moment when the leverage model is visibly struggling. Ripple wants XRP seen as the substance to Strategy’s spectacle. The timing, right as Strategy’s stock falls below its Bitcoin, is not an accident.

Meanwhile, the CLARITY Act is stuck on one provision XRP’s biggest catalyst, the CLARITY Act, is still jammed up, and now we know exactly where. The sticking point is Section 604.

That provision would establish that non-custodial blockchain developers are not money transmitters. Sounds technical, but it is the fight. Nearly 100 Catholic bishops and an anti-trafficking group argue Section 604 creates loopholes that traffickers and criminals could exploit. Crypto advocates fire back that it just protects software developers from being regulated like banks. Either way, the bill is stuck behind this argument, with a July 17 hearing as the next checkpoint.

So XRP’s catalyst is not just “delayed” in some vague way. It is hung up on one specific, contested section. That is worth knowing.

The price reality Back to the chart, because it is tense. XRP at $1.05 is a nickel above $1.00, the floor it has defended this entire correction. It is the weakest major coin this week. Sellers keep breaking support. Every bounce fails.

But here is a fact that does not get enough attention: XRP exchange balances have dropped to 2021 lows, with over 570 million tokens moving into long-term wallets this year. Translation: holders are pulling XRP off exchanges and sitting on it, not selling. That is accumulation, quietly, under an ugly price.

The levels Down: $1.00 is the line. Below it, $0.95 then $0.90.

Up: reclaim $1.12, then $1.20 to say the downtrend is breaking.

Bottom line XRP at $1.05 is fighting for $1 while its CEO picks a very public, very pointed fight with Saylor, and lands some real hits. The CLARITY Act is stuck on Section 604 until at least July 17. Near-term, the price is weak, no sugarcoating it.

But underneath: exchange balances at 2021 lows, holders accumulating, ETF inflows continuing, Ripple positioning XRP as the substance play while the leverage model wobbles. Watch $1.00 above everything. Hold it and XRP survives this. Lose it and the next leg opens. That is where things stand, and it comes down to a nickel.

FAQ What is the XRP price today?

XRP is trading at $1.05 on June 28, 2026, roughly flat on the day but down almost 8% on the week, the weakest major coin, clinging to the critical $1.00 level.

What did Ripple’s CEO say about Saylor?

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called Strategy’s preferred-stock funding model “financial engineering” that distracted the market and hurt crypto, pointing to STRC’s slide to a record low as evidence. He runs the company behind XRP, a Bitcoin rival.

What is Section 604 of the CLARITY Act?

Section 604 would establish that non-custodial blockchain developers are not money transmitters. Anti-trafficking groups argue it creates loopholes criminals could exploit, while crypto advocates say it protects developers from bank-like regulation. The dispute has stalled the bill.

Will XRP fall below $1?

It is a real risk. At $1.05, XRP is a nickel from $1.00, the floor it has defended all correction. Sellers keep breaking support. However, exchange balances at 2021 lows show holders are accumulating, not selling.

What are the key XRP levels to watch?

Down: $1.00 is critical, then $0.95 and $0.90. Up: XRP needs to reclaim $1.12, then $1.20 to signal the downtrend is breaking.

AUTHOR

Freelance writer and crypto enthusiast with a focus on Web3, delivering clear and engaging articles. Known for his well-researched articles and insightful analysis, Shayan covers a broad range of topics including market trends, blockchain technology, decentralized finance (DeFi), and emerging crypto projects. His writing aims to educate both beginners and experts, providing clear, engaging content that helps readers stay informed about the fast-evolving crypto space. Shayan's expertise and dedication make him a trusted voice in the blockchain community.

Thursday was particularly positive days for the spot ETFs tracking Hyperliquid's token.

The evident divergence in how ETF investors behave toward the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap continues. The past week saw some record-setting withdrawals from the BTC funds, but those following HYPE and XRP have maintained their green dominance.

At the same time, the SOL funds have turned red after the previous week’s positive performance.

XRP and HYPE Still Dominate CryptoPotato reported last week that the spot ETFs tracking HYPE, XRP, and SOL defied the trend set by the two largest digital assets and attracted notable capital. The trend extended in the past week for two of those assets, and one day was particularly positive for the HYPE funds.

Data from SoSoValue reveals that Thursday stands out with just over $108 million in net inflows, making it by far the best single-day performance from the funds. With a lot more modest $1.46 million on Tuesday and $1.82 million on Friday, the week ended with $111.36 million in net inflows. It also set the record for the most significant weekly inflows, surpassing the previous of $72.38 million marked during the funds’ second week of existence.

The spot XRP ETFs also ended the week strongly, albeit nowhere near HYPE’s Thursday inflows. They attracted $15.63 million on Friday, building on the $5.31 million on Monday and $2.05 million on Wednesday. With Tuesday and Thursday being $0.00 days, the week ended with $23 million in net inflows, the best in a month and a half.

The cumulative total net flows have risen to another all-time high of $1.47 billion. Moreover, both XRP and HYPE ETFs have been on a green-only weekly streak for 8 and 7 consecutive weeks now, respectively.

SOL Joins BTC and ETH While the HYPE and XRP products have continued their impressive streak, SOL has fallen behind with a $3.8 million net outflow. Thus, the Solana ETFs have joined the two market leaders.

You may also like: Hyperliquid Responds After Appearing on Singapore’s Investor Alert List Bitcoin Didn’t Lose to Gold, the Rotation Story Is Wrong: Analyst Bitcoin Holds Key Price Floor Despite Weak Bullish Signals: Bitfinex Alpha The spot Bitcoin ETFs registered another massive withdrawal in the past week, with nearly $1.8 billion leaving the funds. This was their second-worst weekly performance in their 2.5-year history. The Ethereum funds were also in the red, with more than $273 million withdrawn.

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Bitcoin briefly dipped below $60,000 during the final week of June before buyers stepped in, capping a turbulent seven days driven almost entirely by macroeconomic forces rather than anything crypto-native. As of the latest data, Bitcoin trades at $59,873, Ethereum at $1,564, XRP at $1.04, and Solana at $70.37.

What Drove the Selloff

Expectations of higher interest rates for longer, a stronger US dollar, continued ETF outflows, and broad deleveraging across derivatives markets combined to push the market lower. More than $1 billion in long liquidations amplified the move, a reminder of how leverage continues to magnify short-term price action.

Where Each Asset Landed

Bitcoin’s decline found buyers at levels historically associated with long-term accumulation zones, which Avinash Shekhar, Co-founder and CEO of Pi42, described as the more significant signal from the week. “What stands out is not the decline itself but where it found support,” he said in an interview with Coinpedia.

Ethereum underperformed the broader market, sliding 9.84% on the week to $1,564. XRP showed relative resilience, losing less ground than most major altcoins and ending the week at $1.04, supported by sustained institutional interest tied to spot ETF product growth. Solana held up comparatively well at $70.37, reflecting continued confidence in its ecosystem’s development activity. Dogecoin dropped but remained reactive, ending down 11.97% on the week at $0.073, consistent with its history of quick responses to sentiment shifts.

Capital Is Becoming Selective

Shekhar identified a broader structural shift in how money is moving through the market. “Capital is becoming increasingly selective,” he said. “Rather than moving uniformly across the market, investors are differentiating between assets based on liquidity, institutional participation and ecosystem fundamentals. This marks a notable shift from previous market cycles, where momentum alone often drove broad-based rallies.”

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.79 billion in weekly outflows, the second-largest weekly sell-off since their launch. Combined unrealised losses for Michael Saylor and Tom Lee reached $24.5 billion during the week, according to on-chain tracking.

What Comes Next

Shekhar said the next directional move for digital assets will likely be determined by institutional flow data, macroeconomic readings, and monetary policy signals. A recovery in ETF inflows, easing inflation, and improved global liquidity conditions could lay the foundation for renewed momentum. Until those conditions change, he expects markets to remain range-bound with heightened sensitivity to economic data.

“The broader picture, however, remains constructive,” Shekhar said. “Institutional adoption, blockchain infrastructure development and real-world use cases continue to expand despite near-term volatility. Periods of consolidation are increasingly becoming opportunities for stronger fundamentals to emerge.”

Story Ends Here

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