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Japan's SBI Holdings has crossed 2 million registered accounts on its crypto exchange platform, a milestone that reflects both deliberate corporate strategy and a broader shift in how Japanese retail investors are engaging with digital assets.

A Milestone Shaped by Consolidation and Loyalty Programs The 2 million figure was recorded on July 6, and it was not achieved through organic growth alone. The round figure was formed through the merger of accounts from the VCTRADE and BITPOINT platforms following SBI's April acquisition of BITPoint Japan. That deal accelerated a push that SBI's management had been building through a series of crypto reward programs tied to its broader financial product suite.

At the center of that push is $XRP. SBI Holdings distributed $XRP to its own shareholders as a formal shareholder benefit, a program renewed in 2026 with distributions beginning May 1, effectively reaching hundreds of thousands of Japanese retail investors. The tiers are modest but deliberate: shareholders holding 100 to 999 shares receive 500 yen worth of $XRP, while investors with 1,000 or more shares may receive up to 1,000 yen in $XRP depending on their holding period.

The rewards do not stop at share ownership. In February 2026, SBI issued a blockchain-based bond worth 10 billion yen, approximately $64.5 million, that rewarded retail investors with $XRP alongside fixed interest payments. Separately, SBI Shinsei Bank launched a pilot program on June 10, 2026, that lets depositors redeem 20% of their deposit interest as vouchers for cryptocurrencies, including $BTC and $XRP, targeting around 4.33 million eligible accounts.

Yen Weakness and the Search for Alternative Assets The timing of this retail crypto surge is not coincidental. A sustained weakening of the Japanese yen has pushed both corporations and individual savers to look beyond traditional yen-denominated instruments. Japanese firms are not accumulating $BTC and $XRP for classic exchange speculation, but for a new national practice in which corporations include cryptocurrency in their shareholder loyalty programs.

SBI Holdings has maintained close ties with Ripple since 2016 and remains one of its largest external shareholders, with an estimated 9% equity stake. That relationship now underpins a financial infrastructure stack spanning tokenized securities, stablecoin distribution, and payment corridors. SBI VC Trade began distributing Ripple's U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, in Japan on March 31, 2026, following Japan's revised Payment Services Act.

SBI's ambitions in the domestic exchange market are clear. The conglomerate's goal is to overtake historical competitors by client base, including Coincheck, which still leads with 2.62 million accounts, and to build a full-fledged on-chain ecosystem anchored around Ripple and XRP Ledger technologies.

Sources
Crypto Briefing: SBI VC Trade surpasses 2M registered accounts as Japanese firms use Bitcoin and XRP for loyalty programs
U.Today: Japanese Firms Accumulate More Bitcoin and XRP Amid Yen Drop, SBI Reports
DL News: Japanese securities giant to issue $65 million worth of XRP-paying blockchain bonds

As financial infrastructure providers turn to blockchain-based solutions to overhaul cross-border payments, the institutional use of stablecoins is rapidly expanding. The latest example is Nuvion’s integration of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin into its global banking and payments platform.

Unified access to fiat and digital assets via a single APIBy adding RLUSD to its AI-powered platform, Nuvion aims to deliver faster reconciliation to corporations and fintech firms. With this integration, users can seamlessly access blockchain-enabled payment flows without disconnecting from traditional financial infrastructure.

The inclusion of RLUSD marks another step in broadening Nuvion’s unified finance platform. Now, businesses can transition between fiat currencies and digital assets through a single API, enabling the use of various payment channels within the same ecosystem.

Mini glossary: RLUSD is a stablecoin developed by Ripple, designed with regulatory compliance in mind. XRPL is the open-source blockchain network in Ripple’s ecosystem, focusing on digital asset transfers.

Cross-border payments have long struggled with issues such as redundant intermediary banks, high transaction costs, delayed transfers, and limited transparency. These challenges can put pressure on company cash flows, complicate treasury management, and slow the pace of international trade.

Accelerating settlement for institutional paymentsNuvion believes that integrating RLUSD could help alleviate many of these pain points. The company’s solution aims to offer near real-time settlement, more efficient liquidity management, and blockchain-based payment options tailored for institutional use.

Nuvion CEO Keisha Clark explained that the future of global payments is real-time, programmable, and borderless, and that RLUSD integration will enable businesses to access faster settlements, greater flexibility, and modern financial services through a unified platform.

With this expanded platform, businesses can manage treasury operations across multiple currencies and embed stablecoin payments directly into their applications—without having to set up their own blockchain infrastructure. This approach may simplify payment processes and reduce technical burdens for enterprises.

Ripple strengthens RLUSD role in institutional paymentsThe partnership also supports Ripple’s strategy to promote RLUSD in enterprise payment networks. Ripple, a financial technology leader in digital payment solutions, focuses on using blockchain infrastructure for cross-border transfers.

RLUSD can be utilized on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum networks, providing companies with access to multiple blockchain ecosystems while supporting greater liquidity in Ripple’s digital payments network.

Regulatory-compliant stablecoins are standing out as key instruments bridging the gap between traditional finance and blockchain, especially as demand grows for faster, more efficient global transactions.

Nuvion’s RLUSD integration is viewed as a significant step toward continuous, compliance-focused, and programmable networks for corporate payment infrastructure. This transformation is expected to improve payment flows in cross-border trade.

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.

In This Article Korea's XRP Ripple Premium Is Structural, Not AccidentalWhale Activity and Exchange Outflows Back the Retail StoryXRP Price Context: Recovery in Progress, Global Volume Softer XRP Ripple has reclaimed the top spot on Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with $52.33M in 24-hour trading volume, outpacing Bitcoin at $42.14M and Ethereum at $24.30M on the same venue.

Roughly 10% of Upbit’s entire $493.74M daily crypto exchange volume was in XRP while the two largest coins by global market cap finished second and third.

(SOURCE: CoinGecko)

The gap matters because Bitcoin and Ethereum represent the default institutional benchmarks for crypto demand. When XRP trading volume overtakes both on a major regulated exchange, it is a signal that Korean retail capital is rotating toward the token with intention, not just chasing a news headline.

Even with XRP dominating trading volume in South Korea, the token is trading at $1.13, down -1.4% over the past 24 hours, with overall daily trading volume at just over $1.71Bn.

Korea’s XRP Ripple Premium Is Structural, Not Accidental The current volume snapshot fits a pattern that has been building for years. According to Upbit’s own disclosure, XRP was the exchange’s largest digital asset by cumulative trading volume in 2025, surpassing $1 trillion in trading volume on the platform and exceeding Bitcoin’s total.

Ryan Yoon, an analyst at Tiger Research cited by Investing.com, attributes the sustained dominance to South Korean retail investors, particularly those in their 40s and 50s, rotating capital out of domestic and US equities and back into crypto, with XRP as their primary target.

Earlier this year, XRP trading volume on Upbit surged 289% in a single hour during a momentum window, compared to a 128% increase on Binance over the same period.

The divergence illustrates just how sensitive the Korean crypto market is to XRP price catalysts relative to global venues. PANews reports that approximately 15% of global XRP trading volume now originates from South Korea.

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Whale Activity and Exchange Outflows Back the Retail Story 🚨🚨🚨Something interesting is happening with $XRP liquidity.

Upbit just took the top spot in XRP trading volume, beating Binance, Coinbase, and every other global exchange on the heatmap.

Liquidity is positioning before headlines catch up.

Why is South Korea betting on $XRP? pic.twitter.com/OG61uKXEo1

— X Finance Bull (@Xfinancebull) March 8, 2026

The volume data is one half of the picture. The other is where the coins go after they are traded. In May, an unidentified investor withdrew 6.3 million XRP from Upbit in a single transaction.

Around the same time, on-chain data tracked by CoinGlass showed whale investors, large holders whose moves can shift market structure, pulled $135M worth of XRP off exchanges in a single week.

Exchange outflows, where coins move from trading platforms into private wallets, are a standard on-chain metric (a measure derived directly from blockchain transaction data) interpreted as accumulation rather than selling preparation.

Data from CoinGlass shows net XRP outflows from exchanges totaled $30.38M over the past seven days and $147.50M over the past month.

That combination, high spot trading volume on Upbit alongside sustained net outflows globally, suggests two distinct buyer cohorts: active Korean retail traders on one side and longer-horizon accumulators on the other.

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XRP Price Context: Recovery in Progress, Global Volume Softer The "3rd Retest" would be a gift 🎁 $XRP https://t.co/VaSUr4R1OR pic.twitter.com/kRbJ4Sc36Z

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) July 6, 2026

On the XRP Ripple price, the token bottomed at $1.01 during last month’s broader market selloff before recovering to approximately $1.14, a 12.87% rebound. Over the past week, it is up +8%, with a -1.4% loss in the most recent 24-hour window. XRP’s current market capitalization is roughly $77Bn, ranking it sixth among cryptocurrencies globally.

One counterpoint worth flagging: global XRP trading volume over the same 24-hour period fell 31% to approximately $1.21Bn. The strength on Upbit is therefore a Korean-specific phenomenon running against a softer global backdrop, not a uniform global surge.

That divergence reinforces the argument that domestic Korean crypto market dynamics, retail rotation, KRW liquidity depth, and Ripple’s longstanding relationships with Korean remittance providers are doing the heavy lifting.

Institutional demand is also building alongside the retail story. XRP-linked ETFs have attracted over $1.21Bn in cumulative inflows globally, according to data cited by TradingView, while Bitcoin and Ether spot ETFs recorded net outflows over the same period.

That institutional channel may eventually decouple XRP’s Korean spot activity from pure retail sentiment and anchor it to a broader demand base.

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XRP is witnessing massive demand from across multiple fronts at once, recording capital inflows from real-world asset (RWA) tokenization on the XRPL, ETF inflows, and new wallets. Evernorth, a Ripple-backed digital asset treasury firm, revealed the development amid significant recovery in XRP price.

Huge RWA Tokenization Growth on XRPL: Evernorth Holdings Tokenized RWAs on the XRPL network have grown significantly from almost $150 million a year ago to more than $4 billion, Evernoth Holdings revealed on July 7. This marks a notable growth despite the bear market.

XRP treasury Evernorth highlighted that more than 500 products now live on XRPL. Notably, JMWH and Ondo Short-Term Government Bond Fund are leading tokenized assets representing nearly $2.5 billion in value.

As CoinGape earlier reported, JPMorgan, Ripple, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance completed first cross-border tokenized treasury settlement on XRPL. The transaction was settled in about 4 seconds.

in about four seconds,” Evernoth noted. It added that XRP is recording massive capital inflows from RWA tokenization.

Tokenized RWAs on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Source: RWAxyz XRP ETFs Record Consistent Inflows Evernorth revealed that spot XRP ETFs follow tokenized RWA in capital inflows. XRP ETFs have recorded consistent inflows as compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

Spot XRP ETF inflows reached an 8th week streak, totaling $1.49 billion in cumulative net inflows. Notably, the spot ETFs recorded $17.19 million in total inflows last week. However, it is 4x smaller than the tokenized RWA market.

Evernorth has noted that these inflows signal a shift toward massive institutional participation. It bridges tradFi with the crypto market, as total net assets under management reach $1.05 billion.

XRP ETF Inflows. Source: SoSoValue Rise in XRP Wallets XRP price recovered more than 14% recently before paring gains. The price is currently trading at $1.13, with a 24-hour low and high of $1.11 and $1.16, respectively. Furthermore, trading volume has increased by almost 50% over the last 24 hours.

Evernorth claimed the recent recovery came amid a massive rise in new wallets last week. New wallets have increased from 18.1K to 26K within a few weeks. This marks the highest weekly count since March.

New XRP Wallets per Week. Source: Evernorth Meanwhile, CoinGlass data showed massive buying in the derivatives market in the past few hours. At the time of writing, the total XRP futures open interest jumped 1% to $2.38 billion in the last 4 hours. Futures OI on CME jumped 3.21% and almost 0.75% on Binance.

Ripple joins Call of Duty Endowment to support American veterans.

The United States of America celebrated its 250th Independence Day on July 4. 

“With a single sheet of parchment and 56 signatures, America began the greatest political journey in human history,” said President Donald Trump.

As the world's leading economy celebrated the Semiquincentennial, the blockchain technology and financial payments company Ripple stepped up to support American veterans.

Ripple to match donations to veterans up to $10K in XRP Ripple announced on July 4 that it is going to match donations to the Call of Duty Endowment, a nonprofit organization that helps unemployed veterans get high-quality jobs after their military service, up to $10,000 in XRP.

The Call of Duty Endowment claims to have supported the placement of over 165,000 veterans and aims to place 200,000 vets in jobs by 2030.

Ripple said it is supporting the organization as part of the Giving 4th campaign so that Independence Day becomes a national day of charitable giving.

The company encouraged users to donate to support the veterans with cash, stocks, XRP, or Ripple's USD-pegged stablecoin RLUSD.

In turn, Ripple said it will match the donation in XRP, up to a maximum match of $10,000.

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Ripple's Call of Duty Endowment campaign for U.S. veterans

Users thanked the Ripple team and CEO Brad Garlinghouse for supporting American veterans.

At the time of writing, the campaign has raised $814.19, and if and when the amount reaches $10,000, Ripple said it will match the amount in XRP.

At press time, XRP was trading at $1.14, down around 50% in a year.

Popular on TheStreet Roundtable:Veteran trader who called 50% gold crash makes major predictionMichael Saylor predicts Bitcoin's next decadeCathie Wood expects a volatile Bitcoin uptrendRipple becomes fully MiCA-compliantRipple made another major announcement on July 6 that it has received authorization of its Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF).

The authorization confirms Ripple as fully Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA)-compliant, and the firm's end-to-end regulated crypto payments product is now available to financial institutions, corporates, and businesses across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area.

Ripple said it now holds more than 75 regulatory licenses across the world.

TLDR A $1,000 investment in the first spot XRP ETF is now worth about $457. Brazil’s XRPH11 has declined 54.3% since its April 2025 launch. U.S. spot XRP ETFs now manage about $1.05 billion in assets. XRP traded near $1.14 after gaining 8.5% over the past week. A $1,000 investment in the spot XRP ETF launched in Brazil now holds an estimated value of about $457. The fund has lost more than half its value since its April 2025 debut. Meanwhile, XRP traded near $1.14 after posting an 8.5% weekly gain.

Brazil’s Early XRP ETF Records Sharp Decline Brazil introduced the first regulated spot XRP ETF on April 25, 2025, through Hashdex’s XRPH11 fund. The product launched with about $40 million in assets under management. It invested almost all holdings in physical XRP.

The spot XRP ETF tracks the “Nasdaq XRP Reference Price Index” through direct XRP exposure. The fund started trading at higher levels before entering a sustained decline. As of July 3, XRPH11 traded at 9.14 Brazilian reals, or about $1.74.

The spot XRP ETF has declined 54.3% since launch based on market data. Therefore, a $1,000 investment has fallen to about $457. Assets under management also dropped to roughly $22 million to $25 million.

U.S. Products Expanded the XRP ETF Market Brazil’s spot XRP ETF remained relatively small within the global crypto exchange-traded product market. The country represented less than 1% of worldwide crypto ETP assets. Consequently, the fund generated limited buying pressure for XRP.

The spot XRP ETF market changed after several U.S. products launched in November 2025. Funds from Canary Capital, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, 21Shares, and REX-Osprey entered the market. Those products attracted substantially larger investment flows.

The spot XRP ETF market in the United States now manages about $1.05 billion in assets. Collectively, those funds hold nearly 971 million XRP. Combined net inflows have exceeded $1.4 billion since launch, including $118 million during May 2026.

XRP Price Stayed Within a Narrow Trading Range Canada also expanded the spot XRP ETF market through the Purpose XRP ETF. The fund launched during June 2025 and now manages about 72 million Canadian dollars. That product increased regulated investment access outside the United States.

The broader XRP market still traded within a narrow range despite growing institutional participation. Prices moved mostly between $1.15 and $1.40 during recent months. Market performance largely matched broader cryptocurrency trends.

The spot XRP ETF story shows stronger institutional participation without a matching price recovery. XRP traded at $1.14 at press time after gaining about 1% daily. The token also recorded an 8.5% gain over the previous week.

Brad Garlinghouse called Strategy’s sliding preferred shares a damning indictment of financial engineering. Traders answered with an uncomfortable observation: Ripple also funds itself from the asset it champions, one billion escrowed XRP at a time. The feud between crypto’s two most leveraged evangelists says more about both companies than either intended.

Summary

Brad Garlinghouse criticised Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury model, prompting traders to argue that Ripple also relies on regular XRP sales from escrow to fund its operations. The report says both companies depend on recurring market demand for the assets or securities they sell, although their funding structures and financial risks differ significantly. Strategy’s model faces pressure from fixed dividend obligations, while Ripple’s escrow based funding is presented as more flexible but remains dependent on sustained demand for XRP. In the last days of June 2026, with Strategy’s flagship preferred stock trading roughly 25 percent below its $100 par value, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse decided to say what he thought about it. Financial engineering, he argued across a CNBC appearance and a run of posts, does not drive long-term value; utility does. The slide in Strategy’s preferreds was, in his words, a damning indictment of a model built on perpetually selling paper against Bitcoin.

The crypto market being what it is, the counterattack arrived within hours, and it did not come from Strategy. It came from traders pointing at Ripple’s own balance sheet. One widely shared critique put it in five words: two giants, same model. Ripple, the observation went, funds its operations by selling XRP released from escrow every month, tokens it received for nothing at the network’s genesis. Strategy funds Bitcoin purchases by selling preferred shares and debt against coins it bought on the open market. Both companies are, structurally, perpetual sellers of claims connected to the asset their communities want to appreciate.

The comparison is not perfect, and the imperfections are where it gets interesting. But the fact that it landed at all, and stung, reveals something true: the two loudest corporate evangelists in crypto both run treasuries that lean on their chosen asset, and each has built a machine that only works while the market keeps buying what the machine sells. Garlinghouse’s attack on Saylor was accurate. So was the response.

This is an autopsy of the feud: what Garlinghouse actually said, what is really breaking at Strategy, how Ripple’s own funding machine works, where the symmetry holds and where it fails, and why the fight matters for holders of both assets.

What Garlinghouse said, and why now The Ripple chief executive’s late-June comments were unusually pointed for a man who spends most of his public time on regulatory diplomacy. Utility drives long-term value, he argued, and financial engineering does not; companies that exist to hold an asset, funded by issuing securities against it, are running a trade, not a business. The specific exhibit was Strategy’s preferred stock complex, and above all STRC, the retail-focused instrument that had slipped to around 25 percent below its $100 par before a partial recovery toward $84.

He also reached for history. Michael Saylor had spent years dismissing XRP, at one point in 2022 calling it an unregistered security that would be regulated out of relevance, a comment the Ripple community has never forgotten and the SEC case ultimately did not vindicate. Garlinghouse returning fire in Strategy’s weakest quarter was, among other things, a settling of accounts four years in the making.

The timing was not random. Strategy’s model is under its most sustained pressure since the company began accumulating: Bitcoin spent June grinding to 21-month lows near $57,750 before a modest bounce, and the mathematics of the treasury trade turned openly ugly. The company holds 847,363 BTC at an average cost near $75,650, which at June’s lows put the position more than $10 billion underwater on paper for the first time in the current cycle. The market value of the company converged with the value of its coins, with the closely watched mNAV ratio touching 0.99, meaning the equity briefly priced the entire corporate structure at less than the Bitcoin inside it.

For a company whose whole premise is that its securities deserve a premium to their Bitcoin backing, an mNAV below one is not a data point. It is the thesis inverting.

Garlinghouse chose his moment the way prosecutors choose theirs, when the defendant is already bleeding.

Four years of accumulated grievance The feud reads as sudden only to observers who missed its long fuse. Saylor and Garlinghouse have been running opposed theories of crypto value since 2020, and each man’s theory requires the other’s asset to be a mistake.

Saylor’s Bitcoin maximalism was never quiet about XRP. His 2022 dismissal of the token as an unregistered security destined for regulatory oblivion came during the darkest stretch of the SEC lawsuit, when Ripple’s survival was an open question and the token was delisted across American platforms. The comment did not age well in its specifics; the 2023 ruling found XRP itself was not a security in exchange sales, the case settled, and by late 2025 the token had spot ETFs trading in New York. But it cemented a personal dimension that ordinary corporate rivalry lacks. In the XRP community’s memory, Saylor kicked them at the bottom, and Garlinghouse’s June offensive was received there less as analysis than as overdue payback.

The structural rivalry deepened as the companies converged on the same buyers. Strategy’s pitch to institutions is Bitcoin exposure through familiar securities; Ripple’s pitch, increasingly, is regulated crypto infrastructure, custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage, sold to the same treasurers and asset managers. Each chief executive now spends his public life arguing that institutional capital should flow through his door, which makes every stumble by one a sales document for the other. When Strategy’s preferreds slid, Ripple’s sales narrative improved by exactly that much, and Garlinghouse’s decision to narrate the slide personally was, among other things, marketing with a decade of receipts attached.

There is also a generational symmetry neither would enjoy hearing. Both men are the last of crypto’s founder-evangelist chief executives still running at full volume: survivors of multiple cycles, personally synonymous with their assets, and increasingly graded by markets that have stopped awarding style points. The 2026 bear market is auditing both legacies at once, which is why a single CNBC hit escalated so fast.

Neither side is arguing about a preferred stock. They are arguing about which of two life’s works the next cycle vindicates.

What is actually cracking at Strategy Strategy’s machine has three moving parts: buy Bitcoin, issue securities against the story, use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin. The genius of the design in a bull market is reflexivity; every part reinforces the others. The problem in a bear market is the same reflexivity running in reverse.

The preferred stock complex is where the stress concentrates, because the preferreds are the instruments that carry mandatory-feeling obligations. STRC and its siblings pay rich fixed dividends, marketed to income investors as a way to earn double-digit yield on a Bitcoin-adjacent instrument. Those dividends must be paid in cash, and Strategy’s operating software business generates only a sliver of the required amount. The rest comes from issuing more securities, which works while prices cooperate and compounds the obligation when they do not. Analysis circulating from CryptoQuant put the company’s cash and equivalents against its dividend run rate at roughly 14 months of coverage, a runway, not a crisis, but a runway that shortens every quarter the capital markets stay closed to new issuance at acceptable prices.

The company’s response has been to reframe. A newly published Digital Credit framework recasts the preferred complex as a deliberate credit structure rather than an equity kicker, alongside disclosures of a cash position near $3.8 billion intended to reassure preferred holders that dividends are funded regardless of Bitcoin’s path. The reframing had an effect; STRC bounced from its lows toward $84. But a bounce toward 84 cents on the dollar is still a market pricing meaningful doubt into a par instrument, and the underlying arithmetic, fixed cash obligations against a volatile treasury asset, is unchanged.

The bond market’s verdict has been quieter but harsher than the equity market’s. Instruments marketed on the premise that Bitcoin’s ascent makes their coupons safe are being repriced on the premise that the coupons must survive Bitcoin’s descent, which is a different underwriting question entirely, and one the complex was never really sold to answer.

None of this means Strategy is broken. The company has survived worse drawdowns, holds an asset with a history of violent recoveries, and has never been forced to sell a coin. What has cracked is the premium, the market’s willingness to pay more than one dollar for a dollar of Strategy’s Bitcoin, and the premium was the engine. A treasury company at mNAV 1.0 is just a fund with expenses and a dividend bill.

Ripple’s machine, examined honestly To weigh the two giants claim, the Ripple side of the ledger needs the same unsentimental treatment.

Ripple received the bulk of XRP’s fixed 100 billion supply at the network’s creation. In December 2017, it locked 55 billion of those tokens into ledger-enforced escrow, releasing a maximum of one billion per month, a system whose mechanics are worth understanding in full because it is the load-bearing structure of the company’s finances. Each month, Ripple keeps a portion of the release, typically returning 600 to 800 million tokens to new escrows, and the kept portion, generally 200 to 300 million XRP, funds institutional sales, ecosystem investment, and operations.

Strip away the terminology and the structure is this: a private company holding tens of billions of tokens it did not buy, selling a bounded stream of them into the market, every month, for going on a decade. The July 1 release moved one billion XRP, worth about $1.04 billion, through the machine on schedule. The sales are real supply that holders absorb; back-of-envelope, the net release adds an effective inflation of several percent per year to circulating XRP. When Garlinghouse says utility drives value, critics answer that whatever the utility, the most reliable flow in the XRP market is Ripple selling.

The company’s defense is disclosure and discipline. The schedule is public, protocol-enforced, and has never been broken; the relock rate shows restraint; the sales increasingly go to institutional buyers off-exchange; and the proceeds built an actual business, spanning payments, custody, a stablecoin, and the institutional finance stack growing on the XRP Ledger. Ripple processed some $16 trillion in payments volume last year by its own telling, though almost none of it moved through digital assets, a caveat that critics note does heavy lifting.

The war chest the machine built is the part critics skip. A decade of escrow-funded operations left Ripple with cash, an investment portfolio, and acquisition capacity that let it buy its way into prime brokerage and custody during the bear market, spending when leveraged competitors were retrenching. Whatever the model’s fairness, its output is a company that does not need favorable markets to survive them, which is precisely the resilience Strategy’s structure lacks. The same tokens that fund the machine also hang over it: Ripple still holds tens of billions of XRP inside and outside escrow, a treasury whose paper value swings billions with every large move in the token, and whose eventual disposition is the largest known variable in XRP’s long-term supply.

The honest summary: Ripple’s funding model is a slow, transparent, rule-bound liquidation of a genesis grant. That is neither fraud nor utility. It is a financial structure, the very category Garlinghouse aimed at Saylor.

Where the symmetry holds The two companies rhyme in more ways than either community likes to admit.

Both are structural sellers of claims tied to their asset. Ripple sells the asset itself from escrow; Strategy sells securities collateralized by the story of the asset. In both cases, the community holding the asset provides the bid that the corporate machine sells into, and in both cases the machine’s health depends on that bid persisting. The dynamic is familiar from every corner of crypto where a large holder must sell to operate, from foundations to the miners whose forced selling set records this year: the entity most invested in the asset’s success is also its most dependable source of supply.

Both are bets that a corporate structure can capture value from a decentralized asset. Saylor’s claim is that Strategy transforms Bitcoin into yield-bearing instruments the traditional market can buy, and deserves a premium for the packaging. Ripple’s claim is that a company can build enough utility around XRP that the token appreciates despite the company’s own selling. Each asks holders to believe the corporate layer adds more than it extracts.

Both have concentrated key-man risk and evangelist chief executives whose personal credibility is a balance sheet asset. And both, crucially, have never been tested by the one scenario their critics model: a market that stops absorbing the machine’s output for years rather than months. Strategy has never had to sell Bitcoin into weakness; Ripple has never faced a market that could not soak up its net release. The 2026 bear market is the closest either has come, which is exactly why the feud erupted now.

Where the symmetry breaks The differences matter as much as the rhyme, and they cut in both directions.

Ripple’s advantages are structural. It sells an asset it was granted, not one it bought with leverage, so there is no cost basis to defend and no margin for a drawdown to destroy. Its obligations are discretionary; the company can slow sales, and owes nobody a dividend. Its escrow is a ceiling, not a floor, and a decade of relocking is a real track record of restraint. Strategy, by contrast, carries fixed cash obligations against a volatile asset, the classic shape of every leveraged treasury accident in financial history. On pure survivability, the comparison flatters Ripple.

Strategy’s advantages are about alignment. Saylor bought his Bitcoin; every coin on the balance sheet was paid for at market, and shareholders chose the leverage knowingly. Ripple’s XRP cost it nothing, which means every sale is nearly pure proceeds, and the buyers funding the company are, in the main, believers in the token the company was given. Critics of Ripple find that arrangement more troubling than Strategy’s, not less: Saylor is levered alongside his holders, while Ripple is structurally the counterparty to its own community. The SEC agreed in part, finding in 2023 that Ripple’s institutional XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings, litigation Strategy never faced for buying an asset regulators treat as a commodity.

There is also a difference in what failure looks like. If Strategy’s model fails, the damage is concentrated: preferred holders and shareholders eat losses, and Bitcoin absorbs a large forced seller. If Ripple’s model fails, meaning the market permanently stops absorbing escrow releases at viable prices, the company slows the machine and lives off its accumulated war chest and businesses, from custody to its stablecoin and consortium positions. One machine is fragile and aligned; the other is durable and extractive. Pick your indictment.

What breaking would actually look like Since both communities spend the bear market gaming the other machine’s failure, it is worth specifying, mechanically, what failure would require for each. The exercise is clarifying, because neither breaking point is where the rhetoric puts it.

Strategy does not break at any particular Bitcoin price. An unrealized loss, even the ten-figure one June produced, forces nothing by itself. The machine breaks at the intersection of three conditions: capital markets closed to new issuance at tolerable terms, the cash runway for preferred dividends exhausted, and Bitcoin still depressed when the runway ends. The CryptoQuant-style coverage math, roughly 14 months at recent burn, is therefore the number to watch, along with every successful or failed issuance that extends or shortens it. If the company reaches the runway’s end with markets still shut, the choices collapse to suspending preferred dividends, which detonates the income story the complex was sold on, or selling Bitcoin, which detonates the never-sell story the equity was sold on. Either detonation is survivable as finance and devastating as narrative, and Strategy is, before anything else, a narrative company.

Ripple’s machine breaks differently, because its obligations are soft. The company cannot be forced to sell escrow releases into a bid that is not there; it can relock more, spend reserves, and wait. What actually breaks the model is a demand-side regime change that outlasts the war chest: exchange volumes, institutional sales, and ETF absorption persistently below the net release for years, forcing the company to choose between starving its operations and visibly capitulating on price. The tell would appear first in the monthly relock data, months where Ripple returns far more than 800 million because it cannot place the difference, and in the ETF creations that have so far run inflows even through the June collapse. Ripple’s breaking point, in other words, is measured in years of demand drought, whereas Strategy’s is measured in months of dividend runway. That asymmetry, more than any quote from either chief executive, is the real difference between the giants.

The shared vulnerability is the reflexivity of reputation. Each machine runs on the founder’s credibility with a specific buyer base, income investors for Saylor, the XRP faithful and institutional partners for Garlinghouse, and credibility is the one input that cannot be relocked or refinanced once spent. Public feuds draw down exactly that account, which is the best argument that this fight, entertaining as it is, was unwise for both.

What the feud is really about Beneath the personal history, Garlinghouse and Saylor are arguing about the only question that matters for corporate crypto: what entitles a company to trade at a premium to the assets it touches?

Saylor’s answer is packaging and leverage: transform a volatile commodity into instruments with yields, durations, and risk profiles that traditional capital can hold, and the transformation deserves a spread. The 2026 drawdown is testing whether that spread survives an mNAV of one, and the original exchange that started this feud happened precisely because the test is live.

Bitcoin will evolve by changing less at the protocol layer and mattering more everywhere else.

The base layer will harden.
The capital markets will deepen.
Digital Credit will expand.

The world will build on Bitcoin. $BTC https://t.co/2ptwt4XJdu

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 6, 2026 Garlinghouse’s answer is utility and adoption: build payment corridors, custody, stablecoins, and bank integrations, and the token underneath appreciates on fundamentals. The awkwardness is that after a decade of building, XRP trades near $1.15, down roughly 70 percent over a year, while the company thrives, a divergence that suggests corporate success and token appreciation are far more loosely coupled than the utility thesis promises.

The stakes extend well past the two companies, because each man is the reference implementation for a sector. Strategy spawned an entire class of digital asset treasury companies, dozens of firms across Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and beyond, that copied the playbook of issuing securities to accumulate tokens, and the whole class has compressed toward or below net asset value in the 2026 drawdown. If the original cannot hold a premium, the copies have no argument at all, and the capital markets window that funded the sector’s accumulation closes for everyone at once. Ripple, meanwhile, is the reference case for the token-issuer-as-operating-company model, the template every foundation and labs entity with a treasury full of its own token quietly studies. How the market ultimately judges a decade of escrow-funded operations sets the discount rate on every project financed the same way.

Neither man can point at the scoreboard right now. Strategy’s premium has evaporated; Ripple’s token has detached from its company. Both models produced billion-dollar enterprises, and both have so far failed, in this bear market, to produce what their communities actually bought in for.

The question holders should actually ask For all its entertainment value, the feud offers one genuinely useful lens to holders of either asset: identify the machine, then ask what keeps it fed.

Strategy’s machine is fed by capital markets. The question for its investors is not whether Saylor believes, but whether new buyers of preferreds and converts keep showing up at prices that let the dividends get paid without selling coins. Watch issuance windows, coverage runway, and the mNAV, because those are the machine’s vital signs, and the recent bounce in STRC is the market betting, tentatively, that the framework holds.

Ripple’s machine is fed by the XRP market itself. The question for its holders is not whether the company wins customers, but whether the demand side, exchange flow, institutional sales, the new ETFs that have been quietly absorbing supply, keeps outrunning a permanent, transparent seller. Watch the monthly net release against those flows, because that ratio, not partnership headlines, is what the last decade says actually governs the float.

Two giants, same model was meant as a gotcha, and it worked because it was half true. The fuller truth is sharper: two giants, two machines, one shared dependency. Both run on belief that renews monthly, and in a market like this one, belief is the scarcest collateral either company holds.

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

While XRP holders everywhere else argue about ETF flows and price charts, one country quietly turned the token into working infrastructure. Regulated prepaid money on the XRP Ledger, a Deloitte-attested stablecoin, tokenized bonds paying XRP bonuses, and a financial giant that pays shareholder dividends in the token. This is what the utility thesis looks like when someone actually builds it.

Summary

Japan has built the world’s most extensive real world XRP ecosystem through SBI with licensed prepaid tokens, RLUSD distribution, tokenized bonds, and shareholder rewards. SBI Ripple Asia’s regulated prepaid token framework opens access to Japan’s 30 trillion yen prepaid payments market using the XRP Ledger. Japan is proving XRP’s infrastructure utility through regulated adoption even as the token’s market price remains driven largely by ETF flows and speculation. In March 2026, a Japanese travel company began selling prepaid payment tokens to ordinary consumers, issued on the XRP Ledger, under a license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency. No press cycle followed, no price candle marked the moment, and most XRP holders outside Japan never heard about it. It was, nonetheless, a first that the token’s global community has waited more than a decade for: real, regulated, consumer-facing money moving on the ledger, in the world’s third-largest economy, under the full supervision of a G7 regulator.

The company behind the license, SBI Ripple Asia, is one arm of a structure with no parallel anywhere else in crypto. SBI Holdings, the Tokyo financial conglomerate spanning brokerage, banking, insurance, and asset management, has spent a decade wiring Ripple’s technology and the XRP token into the machinery of Japanese finance: a joint venture for payments, an exchange business distributing RLUSD with audited reserves, tokenized corporate bonds that pay bonuses in XRP, bank remittance corridors, loyalty-point conversion, and, in a flourish no Western public company has matched, XRP paid out to SBI’s own shareholders as a benefit.

The result is a natural experiment the rest of the XRP world should study closely. Everywhere else, the token’s story in 2026 is financial: ETF flows, escrow releases, a price near $1.15 that has lost roughly 70 percent in a year. In Japan, and effectively only in Japan, the story is operational. One country took the utility thesis literally, and the gap between that country and everywhere else has become the sharpest lens available on what XRP actually is.

This is the anatomy of the SBI empire: how the alliance was built, what each piece does, what the 30 trillion yen prepaid experiment means, and what Japan proves, and fails to prove, about the token underneath.

JUST IN: Japan tokenizes prepaid payments on the XRP Ledger with SBI and Tobu Top Tours issuing tokens for the 30 trillion yen prepaid market pic.twitter.com/1zYYC57IeE

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 19, 2026 A decade of patient wiring The SBI-Ripple relationship is old by crypto standards, and its age is the point. SBI Ripple Asia was founded in 2016 as a joint venture to bring Ripple’s settlement technology to Japanese and Asian financial institutions, back when the pitch was replacing correspondent banking messaging. SBI Holdings became one of Ripple’s largest outside shareholders, and its chief executive, Yoshitaka Kitao, one of the token’s most senior corporate evangelists anywhere, a position he has held through two bear markets that silenced most of his peers.

What distinguishes the Japanese build-out is that it advanced through the regulator, not around it. Japan’s Payment Services Act and its licensing regimes for exchanges, stablecoins, and prepaid instruments are among the strictest in the world, drafted in the shadow of Mt. Gox. Every piece of the SBI-Ripple stack exists because it cleared that bar: the exchange arm is licensed, the stablecoin distribution is licensed, and the newest layer, prepaid tokens, required SBI Ripple Asia to register as a prepaid payment instrument issuer, which it completed on March 26.

The strategy compounds slowly and survives drawdowns, which is precisely what the rest of the XRP ecosystem has struggled to do. While the token’s price detached from Ripple’s corporate success everywhere else, a divergence now so stark that the company’s own funding machine has become the subject of open debate, the Japanese structure kept adding licensed capabilities through the decline. Bear markets kill speculative adoption; they barely register against regulatory roadmaps measured in years.

The depth of commitment shows in details that would be unthinkable at a Western firm. SBI has distributed XRP to its own shareholders as a shareholder benefit, a program renewed in 2026 with distributions beginning May 1, effectively paying dividends in the token to hundreds of thousands of Japanese retail investors. Whatever one thinks of the token, no other public financial conglomerate on earth compensates its owners with it.

The regulator that Mt. Gox built None of the SBI structure is intelligible without Japan’s regulatory history, because the country’s crypto framework was forged by catastrophe earlier and more thoroughly than anywhere else on earth.

Tokyo hosted the industry’s first systemic disaster: the 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox, then the world’s dominant Bitcoin exchange, which vaporized hundreds of thousands of customer coins and put crypto on the front page of every Japanese newspaper as a consumer-protection failure. The political response was not prohibition but codification. Japan amended the Payment Services Act to license exchanges years before Western peers had any framework at all, then tightened again after the 2018 Coincheck hack, building a regime of segregated custody, cold-storage mandates, listing reviews, and capital requirements that made Japanese licenses among the hardest and most valuable in the industry.

The same instinct produced the world’s first comprehensive stablecoin law, in force since 2023, which restricted issuance to banks, trust companies, and licensed money transfer agents, and the prepaid instrument framework that SBI Ripple Asia’s March registration slots into. Where American crypto policy spent a decade as litigation and Europe’s arrived only with MiCA, Japan built its rulebook early and then, crucially, stopped changing it. Predictability, not permissiveness, is the Japanese advantage: a firm that plans a five-year build on the Payment Services Act can trust the act will still be there.

That environment selected for exactly the kind of player SBI is. The compliance costs that strangle startups are a rounding error for a conglomerate; the decade-long timelines that venture capital cannot tolerate are ordinary corporate planning in Tokyo; and the regulator’s preference for long-standing, capitalized, domestically accountable issuers hands incumbents the field. Japan did not set out to build the world’s best jurisdiction for a Ripple alliance, but a decade of post-Gox rulemaking produced precisely that, and SBI was the institution positioned, and patient enough, to notice.

The history also explains the strategy’s export problem, which shadows everything that follows: the model works because the rules are stable and the champion is native. Neither condition can be shipped.

The prepaid breakthrough: 30 trillion yen in reach The March registration is the piece with the largest addressable prize, because Japan’s prepaid economy is enormous and structurally ready for tokenization.

Japanese consumers hold prepaid value everywhere: transit cards, convenience store balances, gaming credits, gift instruments, corporate points. The market’s annual scale runs around 30 trillion yen, roughly $200 billion, and it operates under the Payment Services Act’s prepaid instrument framework, a regime that already accommodates digital value issued against fiat. SBI Ripple Asia’s registration lets it issue those instruments as tokens on the XRP Ledger, converting a paper-and-database industry into on-chain balances without asking regulators for anything novel.

The first live deployment made the strategy legible: Tobu Top Tours, the travel arm of the Tobu railway group, launched a prepaid token for travel spending, issued and redeemed under the PSA framework, running on XRPL mainnet. A tourist’s prepaid travel balance is now a ledger asset, transferable and programmable within the license’s limits, settling on the same infrastructure that carries XRP itself.

Two properties make this bigger than one travel product. First, it is a template, not a bespoke integration; the registration covers a category, and every subsequent issuer, a retailer, a game publisher, a transit operator, can reuse the same rails. Second, it seeds the ledger with regulated, yen-denominated value at consumer scale, the raw material for the payments network Ripple has promised for a decade. Prepaid tokens do not require anyone to hold or even know about XRP, but they generate transaction flow, wallet adoption, and institutional operating experience on the ledger, the boring accumulation that the XRPL’s institutional finance stack needs far more than another partnership announcement.

The realistic caveat: 30 trillion yen is the market’s size, not SBI’s share, and incumbent prepaid giants will not concede it because a competitor found a better database. Japan’s cashless economy is already crowded with entrenched closed-loop systems, QR wallets with tens of millions of users, transit cards tapped billions of times a year, point programs woven into every retail chain, and each incumbent owns its float, its data, and its customer relationship precisely because its system is closed. The XRPL pitch to those players is interoperability and issuance cost, real advantages that nonetheless ask incumbents to open ecosystems they profit from keeping shut.

SBI’s likelier early wins are exactly what Tobu Top Tours represents: mid-sized issuers in travel, gaming, and regional retail for whom building proprietary rails never made sense, aggregated one license at a time. The breakthrough is the license and the template. The land grab is still ahead, and it will be fought store by store against some of the stickiest payment habits on earth.

RLUSD with a Japanese passport The second pillar arrived five days after the prepaid registration. On March 31, SBI VC Trade, the group’s licensed crypto exchange, began distributing Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to Japanese customers, making it among the first foreign-issued stablecoins to enter Japan through the front door of its regulatory regime.

The distribution came with reserve attestations by Deloitte showing approximately $1.568 billion in assets backing roughly 1.49 billion RLUSD in circulation at the time of the review. In a country where the yen-stablecoin framework is strict enough that domestic issuance has moved slowly, a dollar token with a Big Four attestation and a licensed local distributor is a product with genuine institutional reach, and one whose paperwork alone signals which market it was dressed for.

RLUSD’s Japanese beachhead matters to the global picture more than its size suggests. Ripple’s stablecoin strategy, from its role in the Open USD consortium to its positioning against Circle and Tether, depends on proving RLUSD can win regulated distribution that rivals cannot easily replicate. Japan is the proof case: Tether has never cleared Japanese listing requirements, and the market’s stablecoin shelf is nearly empty. Being early on an empty, heavily regulated shelf is how USDC won Europe under MiCA, and SBI is running the same play for RLUSD in Asia.

The alliance stacked a third pillar the same quarter: tokenized corporate bonds. SBI issued 10 billion yen of its START digital bonds through BOOSTRY’s blockchain platform, retail-accessible instruments paying 1.85 to 2.45 percent, sweetened with XRP bonuses for bondholders through 2029. A conglomerate paying bond incentives in XRP is marketing, but it is also plumbing: it normalizes the token inside conventional Japanese retail finance, one coupon at a time.

The rest of the web Around the three pillars runs a mesh of smaller commitments, individually minor and collectively the texture of real adoption.

Banking: Tottori Bank, a regional institution, uses Ripple-powered rails for remittances, continuing the original SBI Ripple Asia mission of wiring Japanese regional banks into modern settlement. The corridor work is the oldest and least glamorous layer of the stack, and in some ways the most telling: regional bank integrations survive on reliability metrics and audit trails, not conference keynotes, and a rail that has cleared retail remittances under FSA supervision for years is the kind of reference customer that no marketing budget can buy. The regional banking sector, with its aging customers, thin margins, and heavy reliance on slow legacy transfer systems, has always been the most natural Japanese customer for the technology.

Consolidation: SBI has been in talks to fold Bitbank, one of Japan’s larger independent crypto exchanges, into its orbit, a move that would concentrate even more of the country’s licensed trading infrastructure inside the group. In a market where licenses are the moat, buying licensed capacity is buying distribution.

Loyalty: Rakuten’s vast points ecosystem connects to crypto conversion paths that include XRP, linking the token to one of the most widely held loyalty currencies in the country. Points-to-crypto is a small pipe, but it is a pipe pointed at tens of millions of ordinary consumers.

Venture and events: Ripple has committed a $500 million fund for Japanese and Asian corridor development, and the ecosystem’s confidence shows in the calendar: XRP Tokyo 2026, staged with participation from investors including a16z, made the city the token’s de facto global capital this year. Even the group’s hedging tells a story; SBI signed a memorandum with Fasset that contemplates multi-network token issuance, a reminder that the conglomerate’s loyalty is to its strategy, not to any single ledger.

Talent and standards flow through the same mesh. Japanese engineers trained on XRPL integrations inside SBI subsidiaries seed the domestic developer base; the group’s participation in industry associations shapes how Tokyo writes the next round of token rules; and every licensed deployment produces compliance playbooks that shorten the path for the deployment after it. None of this appears in any adoption dashboard, and all of it is why institutional ecosystems, once rooted, prove so hard for competitors to displace.

Ripple, for its part, keeps feeding the region: its acquisition of BC Payments Australia on March 11 extended licensed payment capacity in the neighboring corridor, the kind of unglamorous license-shopping that built the Japanese position in the first place.

JUST IN: Rakuten Wallet launches $XRP as a listed asset and payment method starting from April 15, allowing users to buy with Rakuten Points and spend at over 5 million merchants in Japan pic.twitter.com/cYTZajrmyO

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 13, 2026 Kitao’s long bet Institutional strategies this durable usually trace to one person, and in this case the person has never hidden. Yoshitaka Kitao built SBI out of the SoftBank orbit in the late 1990s into one of Japan’s most aggressive financial groups, and he adopted the Ripple thesis early, publicly, and with a conviction that has outlasted every cycle since. He has used shareholder meetings to talk price targets, put XRP into the group’s shareholder benefit program, and steered corporate development, the joint venture, the exchange arm, the mining and Web3 subsidiaries, around the thesis for a decade.

The bet’s texture is worth appreciating. Kitao committed a regulated, listed conglomerate to a foreign startup’s token in 2016, when the token had no legal clarity anywhere, then held the position through the SEC lawsuit that made XRP untouchable in America, through delistings, through an 80 percent drawdown, and through the 2026 slide. Japanese corporate governance gives a founder-chairman latitude that few Western boards would extend, and Kitao has spent that latitude on patience. The feud now raging between Ripple’s and Strategy’s chief executives over whose model creates value has a quiet third participant: the only major institution that took the utility thesis and actually financed a decade of it.

The dependence runs both directions. For Ripple, SBI is not one partner among many; it is the distribution, licensing, and political capital behind effectively every Japanese achievement the company can point to, which is why Ripple’s regional commitments, the $500 million corridor fund, the Tokyo flagship events, concentrate there. For SBI, Ripple’s technology and token are a differentiator no domestic rival can copy quickly, a moat made of licenses and relationship-years.

Which is also the risk. Kitao is in his mid-seventies. The strategy’s continuation is a succession question as much as a market one, and conglomerates have a long history of new management quietly unwinding a founder’s signature enthusiasms. The Fasset memorandum’s multi-network language, and the group’s general drift toward network-agnostic tokenization, read naturally as institutional hedging around exactly that mortality, corporate and personal. The empire is real. It is also, in the end, one man’s conviction wearing a conglomerate’s balance sheet.

What Japan proves, and what it cannot The Japanese experiment is the strongest evidence anywhere for the utility thesis, and its limits are just as instructive as its successes.

What it proves: the technology clears real regulatory bars. The XRP Ledger now carries licensed consumer prepaid money, a Deloitte-attested stablecoin, and tokenized bonds inside a G7 regulatory perimeter. The perennial skeptic’s claim that no serious regulator would ever bless the stack is, as of this spring, simply false. It also proves the institutional patience model works: a decade of joint-venture building through the regulator produced compounding capabilities that no bull-market partnership spree ever has.

What it cannot prove: that any of this accrues to the token’s price. Prepaid tokens settle in yen value; RLUSD is a dollar instrument; tokenized bonds pay yen coupons. XRP itself is the bridge and gas asset of the ledger they run on, and holders’ monthly reminder of the supply side arrives from escrow regardless of how many travel tokens Japan issues. The uncomfortable arithmetic of 2026 is that the year of Japan’s breakthroughs was also the year XRP fell to $1.01 lows, because the flows that price the token, ETF creations, exchange speculation, escrow absorption, dwarf the ledger’s operational activity and will for years.

The 2026 market backdrop makes the divergence vivid. Spot XRP ETFs launched in the United States in November 2025 to a $1.3 billion opening surge, saw their first outflows in the spring, then settled into a steady multi-week inflow streak even as Bitcoin funds bled through June, leaving roughly a billion dollars under management. Those flows, plus the escrow’s net release, plus exchange speculation, are the entire visible price formation of XRP, and not one of the three has anything to do with a travel token in Saitama. Japanese adoption enters the price, if ever, through a channel so long and indirect, ledger activity to institutional confidence to allocation decisions, that no honest analyst would model it inside a single cycle.

There is a second, subtler limit: the Japanese stack mostly does not need XRP the asset even where it uses XRPL the network. Prepaid instruments are yen claims; RLUSD is a dollar stablecoin with its own reserve economics; bond bonuses denominated in XRP are marketing budget, not settlement demand. The ledger burns trivial XRP in fees and uses it as a bridge only where a corridor chooses it. The utility thesis, stated carefully, was always that ledger adoption would eventually require the asset at scale. Japan is proving the adoption half at a pace no other country matches, and leaving the requirement half exactly as unproven as it was.

The honest framing is that Japan has built the world’s best answer to the wrong question, if the question is next quarter’s price, and the world’s only serious answer to the right one, if the question is whether XRP’s infrastructure ever hosts a real economy. Both questions have constituencies, and they talk past each other daily.

The lonely experiment The sharpest fact about the SBI empire is its solitude. Nothing comparable exists in the United States, where XRP’s 2026 story is entirely financial, ETFs, escrow, and litigation memories. Nothing comparable exists in Europe, where Ripple’s presence is licenses without a champion. The model requires a specific, rare configuration: a large domestic financial group with equity in Ripple, a regulator with clear token frameworks, and an executive willing to spend a decade on it. Japan had all three. No second country currently has two.

The near-misses elsewhere underline how demanding the recipe is. The Gulf states have friendly regulators and sovereign capital, but no domestic conglomerate has married its balance sheet to the token; Ripple’s licenses there are doors without a house behind them. Korea has retail enthusiasm and, soon, won-denominated stablecoins, but its regulatory posture toward foreign-token infrastructure remains cautious, and its chaebol have their own chains to champion. The United States has the ETFs and now the legal clarity, but American institutions buy exposure, not plumbing; nobody is issuing licensed consumer money on XRPL between the coasts. Each jurisdiction supplies one ingredient. Only Japan supplies all three, and it took ten years even there.

That solitude cuts both ways. It makes Japan the indispensable proof case, the one jurisdiction the utility thesis can point to without hedging. It also makes the thesis fragile in a way believers rarely price: a strategy embodied in one conglomerate and one 70-something evangelist is a strategy with key-man and key-country risk. If the SBI experiment stalls, succession, strategy drift, or simply the gravitational pull of that Fasset-style multi-network hedging, there is no second Japan behind it.

For now, the experiment is accelerating, not stalling: three new licensed pillars in a single spring, a consumer market of $200 billion newly addressable, and a shareholder base literally paid in the token. Whether that ever moves a chart is the question the rest of the XRP world obsesses over. Japan, characteristically, is not waiting for the answer. It is issuing the next token and the one after that.

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

Multiple networks move at onceIn the span of just two weeks, three major blockchain projects have taken concrete steps toward quantum-resistant infrastructure. @trondao deployed post-quantum signatures on testnet, @NEARProtocol shipped quantum security as part of its 2.13 upgrade, and the $XRP Ledger continued advancing a structured, multi-phase post-quantum roadmap. The moves reflect a broader shift across the industry: networks are no longer waiting for a cryptographic emergency to begin hardening their systems.

NEAR Protocol's upgrade 2.13 adds FIPS-204, a NIST-approved signature scheme built to withstand quantum attacks. NEAR's account model, controlled by rotatable access keys, enables a seamless rotation to quantum-safe signing. The protocol-level upgrade is designed to be transparent to users, meaning NEAR token holders and decentralized application users need take no action.

On the $XRP side, Ripple has introduced a multi-phase roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger for a post-quantum future, with a target for full readiness by 2028. The approach involves active testing of quantum-resistant cryptography and a hybrid rollout that runs alongside existing systems, with Ripple working alongside Project Eleven to accelerate development including validator testing and early custody prototypes. The roadmap also includes a contingency plan to enable a secure migration to quantum-safe accounts if current standards are compromised before the 2028 target.

Why the urgency now The push responds in part to research from Google Quantum AI suggesting that quantum computers could crack current blockchain cryptography with fewer resources and on a faster timeline than previously estimated, with some scenarios placing a credible threat window as early as 2032. If future quantum computers became capable of breaking current encryption standards, cryptocurrency wallets and blockchain infrastructure could face serious vulnerabilities, and although experts continue debating the timeline, many believe preparation must begin years before such systems become commercially viable.

Zcash's Tachyon upgrade is also targeting quantum readiness, according to CoinDesk Research, adding another major protocol to a list that is growing quickly. The broader crypto industry is grappling with the same problem at different speeds. Algorand integrated post-quantum state proofs as far back as 2022, while Bitcoin's debate remains largely at the discussion stage given the complexity of coordinating protocol changes across a decentralized network with no central team. The pattern is clear: projects with more centralized coordination are moving fastest, while the more decentralized networks face a longer road.

The industry's posture has shifted from reactive to proactive. Waiting for Q-Day, the theoretical moment when quantum computers can break current public-key cryptography, is no longer considered an acceptable strategy for infrastructure built to last decades.

Sources
Ripple: Post-Quantum Readiness on the XRP Ledger
CoinDesk: Ripple wants the XRP Ledger to be quantum-proof by 2028
CryptoWisser: NEAR Protocol Upgrade 2.13 is Live on Testnet

Key Highlights XRP jumped more than 13% during the initial three trading days of July, advancing from approximately $1.03 to nearly $1.18. Legislative advancement of the CLARITY Act through the U.S. Senate enhanced positive sentiment surrounding XRP’s regulatory environment. Investment products tracking XRP attracted $6.55M in single-day inflows, with total cumulative inflows reaching $1.49B. Historical data reveals July as a consistently profitable month for XRP, averaging 10.4% gains since 2013. Technical analysis identifies critical resistance at $1.20, while support at $1.15 provides downside protection. XRP launched into July with impressive momentum, posting gains exceeding 13% within a mere three-day span. The digital asset advanced from lows near $1.03 to approach $1.18, capturing fresh interest from market participants.

XRP Price This upward movement coincided with a wider cryptocurrency market rebound. The aggregate crypto market capitalization increased 0.86% to reach $2.18 trillion. Bitcoin surged beyond $62,000, while Ethereum advanced above $1,700.

Disappointing U.S. employment figures contributed to the bullish market sentiment. The American economy generated merely 57,000 positions in June, significantly undershooting the anticipated 110,000. This development strengthened expectations for more accommodative monetary conditions moving forward.

Market analyst ChartNerd (@ChartNerdTA) highlighted a significant long-term technical formation via X, identifying an 8.5-year cup and handle pattern emerging on XRP’s price chart. He cautioned that overlooking XRP at the $1 level “could prove costly,” suggesting that sustained Fibonacci support within the handle formation could establish a pathway toward upper resistance zones. His analysis referenced Fibonacci extension targets at $8, $13, and $27.

$XRP 8.5 YEAR CUP & HANDLE ☕️

Ignoring $XRP around $1 on the macro could prove costly. Price is approaching FIB support within the handle structure under 8.5 years of resistance

If FIB support and the GC hold, it opens the path to attack resistance. FIB extensions = $8/$13/$27 https://t.co/r8v5HKDfij pic.twitter.com/s8yb16b4Sj

— 🇬🇧 ChartNerd 📊 (@ChartNerdTA) July 4, 2026

Legislative Developments Strengthen XRP Sentiment Advancement of the CLARITY Act through the U.S. Senate emerged as a primary catalyst for XRP’s appreciation. This proposed legislation carries implications for the regulatory classification of digital assets under American law.

Market participants reacted favorably to XRP’s inclusion within the SEC/CFTC Digital Commodities classification framework. This development prompted capital reallocation into XRP positions. Additionally, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s financial stake in American Perpetuals Exchange Corporation — an entity associated with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s son — attracted market attention throughout this timeframe.

Investment Fund Activity Supports Bullish Momentum XRP-focused investment vehicles registered $6.55M in daily inflows as of July 2. Total cumulative inflows climbed to $1.49B, while net assets under management stood at $987.91M.

Source: SoSoValue Spot Bitcoin ETFs similarly reversed their outflow trend on July 2, posting $221.72M in daily net inflows. This marked the conclusion of a 10-day withdrawal period, elevating cumulative net inflows to $51.08B. Ethereum spot ETFs contributed $29.08M in net inflows during the identical session.

Historical performance data compiled by CryptoRank demonstrates July’s track record as a consistently profitable period for XRP across seven consecutive years. Average July performance since 2013 registers at 10.4%. Notably, during July 2020, XRP surged more than 48%.

Examining the four-hour timeframe, XRP traded around $1.1714. The Relative Strength Index registered 79.91, positioning the asset within overbought parameters. The Chaikin Money Flow indicator displayed 0.21, signaling continued accumulation pressure.

Immediate resistance is established at $1.20, where a decisive breakthrough could enable progression toward $1.25. Should prices retract beneath $1.15, the subsequent support zone emerges at $1.10.

XRP has made its way into Australia’s financial parliamentary record. In the Australian Parliament’s Register of Members’ Interests, Labor MP Sally Sitou indicated her only cryptocurrency holding is XRP with local exchange CoinSpot.

Australian MP Lists XRP The filing identifies the digital currency as “Cryptocurrency (Ripple).” No Bitcoin and no Ether. Only XRP, included in the financial records of one of the world’s 15 largest economies.

The filing also shows that Sitou has physical gold through ABC Bullion and holds a wide-ranging portfolio of Australian and U.S. equities like the Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Meta Platforms and Costco. XRP is currently the sole listed digital asset.

Australian MP XRP Filing This disclosure sits inside a broader shift in how Australia treats crypto. The country’s Digital Assets Framework Bill Passed Parliament in April 2026, requiring exchanges and tokenized custody providers to obtain an Australian Financial Services License. Ripple is already pursuing that license, an early sign of its intent to entrench itself in the country’s regulated market.

Australia’s approach to regulation has changed significantly. In under a year, the nation moved from years of legislative silence to a well-organized licensing system for crypto firms.

The shift provides Ripple, the company behind XRP, an obligation as well as an opportunity. The moved has drawn wide attention on X, citing a continuation in adoption.

🚨🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA MAKES XRP OFFICIAL 🇦🇺🚨

Australia has officially disclosed XRP holdings in a Member of Parliament’s Register of Interests.

XRP is now publicly listed as part of a lawmaker’s financial assets in one of the world’s largest economies.

Adoption continues. 👀 pic.twitter.com/gJmALhkHYE

— John Squire 🇺🇸 (@TheCryptoSquire) July 4, 2026

White House Official’s XRP Filing & XRP’s Track Record Sitou’s revelation was not the only one capturing attention. Ian Kelley, who serves as the War Room Director at the White House and is also a Special Assistant to the President, reported XRP in a public financial filing after his appointment in January 2025.

His filing places the holding in a Coinbase wallet, valued between $1,001 and $15,000. Unlike Sitou, Kelley holds a broader crypto portfolio, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Chainlink, and Cardano all appear alongside XRP.

Each asset in Kelley’s portfolio falls within the same $1,001 to $15,000 disclosure range. Neither filing reveals the exact number of tokens held. But both put XRP on the record in two separate governments on two separate continents.

Political financial disclosures carry weight. They are sworn documents. When a lawmaker or White House official lists an asset, it signals more than personal preference, it normalizes that asset within the official financial order.

For XRP, appearing in two such filings in a single week adds to a growing pattern of political legitimacy. The company’s pursuit of an Australian Financial Services License shows it is tracking the regulatory door as it opens.

Explore the most hyped crypto presale projects before they hit major exchanges.

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.

TL;DR

XRP ETFs took in $6.55M in net inflows on July 2, all from Bitwise. That marks an eighth consecutive positive week, pushing assets under management to $987.91M across seven funds — about 1.5% of XRP's market cap. The coin is trading at $1.09 against $1.10 resistance heading into a low-liquidity holiday weekend.Blockstream CEO Adam Back called the BIP-110 transaction-filtering proposal effectively dead, with mining-pool support at just 0.31% of hashrate.Shiba Inu coin slipped to 32nd place with a $2.55B market cap, overtaken by NEAR Protocol and Tether Gold. Exchange reserves are climbing back toward 87 trillion tokens after whales returned 493B coins in early July, following a 781B withdrawal in June. About $50M separates SHIB from re-entering the top 30.Bitcoin is holding its $59,000–$62,000 accumulation zone after whales added 270,000 BTC and spot ETFs flipped back to $221.7M in net inflows, but the prolonged Independence Day weekend leaves the market exposed to thinner order books, miner selling pressure, and exaggerated moves if BTC fails to hold above $61,000.American XRP ETFs closed their eighth positive week before the weekendFresh capital entered American spot XRP ETFs right before trading closed for the U.S. Independence Day holiday. The final pre-holiday session brought the funds a net inflow of $6.55 million, closing an eighth consecutive week of institutional buying firmly in positive territory, as per SoSoValue.

Bitwise's fund accounted for the entire day's haul, taking all of the week-ending volume while competitors such as Canary and Grayscale stood at zero. Total assets under management across the seven approved XRP funds have now moved close to the $1 billion mark, reaching $987.91 million. For a young sector, that is a meaningful 1.5% of the asset's total market capitalization.

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Total XRP Spot ETF Net Inflow Over the Last 30 Days, Source: SoSoValueTraders calmly absorbed even the freezing of the CLARITY Act crypto bill, whose vote on Capitol Hill was postponed until the end of the summer because of the recess. Accumulation was also not disrupted by the scheduled release of 1 billion tokens from escrow contracts on July 1. The network absorbed the entire volume without a drawdown, against the backdrop of a three-month record in new wallet creation on the XRPL blockchain.

The coin is now trading at $1.09, pressing against key resistance at $1.10. Thin trading over the holiday weekend could easily tip the balance: if buyers lock in a breakout, the asset will have an open road toward the psychological $1.15 mark, justifying July's historically strong status for XRP.

Adam Back declares collapse of Bitcoin's censoring BIP-110 soft forkBlockstream CEO Adam Back entered the ongoing debate around the BIP-110 proposal, calling the attempt to introduce transaction filtering into Bitcoin commercially stillborn. The well-known cypherpunk reacted harshly to the current disputes in the ecosystem, stating that the initiative had failed because of a lack of interest from investors and traders.

At the center of the conflict is a proposal to limit the network's capacity for non-monetary data such as Ordinals and Runes. According to Back, the desire to artificially clean blocks in the name of imaginary security directly contradicts Bitcoin's p2p nature.

i'm a cypherpunk, and have been running nodes since 1990s. exit remailers, tor, file sharing, bitcoin nodes. p2p networks don't exist unless people with mettle run nodes. filter bippers are weak leeches, scared to p2p, demanding to censor to make nodes "safe" for the weak to run.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) July 3, 2026 He stressed that this filtering fork is already dead on arrival, as the market has completely rejected it and exchanges currently have no long positions in fork futures. Back's words are also confirmed by current on-chain metrics: support for BIP-110 from mining pools has stalled at 0.31% of the total hashrate, making soft-fork activation through the UASF mechanism unrealistic.

Back compared the proposal's authors to people who unsuccessfully tried to burn down a rented house, only to end up outside and now "living in a tent" of their own filtering coin. At the same time, BIP-110 supporters continue to strengthen the defenses around their "granite castle."

The industry veteran concluded that the network's antifragility had once again rejected poorly thought-out ideas, and urged censorship supporters either to adapt or finally split off into their own altcoin.

87 trillion trap: Why Shiba Inu fell out of the top 30Shiba Inu (SHIB) has fallen out of the world's top 30 cryptocurrencies, settling at 32nd place with a market capitalization of $2.55 billion. The meme token failed to withstand direct pressure from NEAR Protocol at $2.6 billion and the tokenized gold asset Tether Gold (XAUt) pushing from behind.

While retail traders remain passive, keeping SHIB's daily trading volume at a modest $70.2 million, major players have started a tough positional battle as exchange reserves return to the critical level of 87 trillion coins, as per CryptoQuant.

This trillion-coin barrier has become a liquidity trap for the token. In late June, whales temporarily eased the pressure by moving 781 billion SHIB to cold wallets, but by early July they had replayed the scenario and returned a fresh batch of 493 billion tokens to exchanges.

Netflow of Shiba Inu (SHIB) coin on centralized exchanges month-to-month, Source: CryptoQuantThe rise in supply to 87 trillion is weighing on price action: investors see it as a sign that large wallets are ready to lock in profit on any local rebound, which firmly blocks growth in market capitalization.

Still, it is too early to write SHIB off. The gap from the coveted top 30 is a symbolic $50 million. Against the backdrop of Japanese competition between Mercari and Rakuten Wallet and expectations for a U.S. ETF from T. Rowe Price, the current drop looks more like a prolonged consolidation.

Whether the token returns to the top league depends on only one thing: whether July demand can absorb those trillions of coins hanging in exchange order books.

Crypto market outlook: Bitcoin accumulation and stablecoin pressure define July openingThe crypto market enters the prolonged Independence Day weekend with Bitcoin recovering above $61,000 after ETF outflows stopped, whales rebuilt exposure near $59,000–$62,000, and stablecoin competition intensified against Circle’s USDC dominance.

Bitcoin price action in Summer 2026, Source: TradingViewKey checkpoints:

Bitcoin accumulation phase confirmed: Whales added 270,000 BTC around $59,000 over two weeks, equal to roughly $16.7 billion in fresh accumulation. Long-term holders also shifted from distribution back to accumulation. The $59,000–$62,000 range is now the main investor positioning zone. Whale behavior and sentiment capitulation show larger holders are treating this area as a buy zone.ETF pressure eased before the holiday weekend: Bitcoin cleared $61,000 after a 10-day spot ETF outflow streak ended. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $221.7 million in net inflows on July 3 after the jobs report reduced fears of a fresh rate-hike shock.July 4 liquidity risk: U.S. markets are entering a prolonged Independence Day weekend. That leaves crypto exposed to thinner liquidity, weaker institutional participation and exaggerated weekend moves.Stablecoin competition is escalating: OUSD launch pressure hit Circle, USDG scaled to $100 million on Robinhood Chain, and non-USD stablecoins reached $1.1 billion in supply, with transfer volume up 16x since 2023.Open USD targets USDC dominance: A new Open USD consortium backed by more than 140 firms, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Coinbase and Stripe, went live with free minting/redemption and shared reserve yield for partners. Circle stock dropped 14–17% as investors priced in direct competition.What matters next week: BTC needs to hold the $59,000–$62,000 accumulation base and keep ETF flows positive. The upside trigger is continued ETF demand plus progress on U.S. crypto market-structure legislation; the downside risk is renewed miner selling, failed ETF follow-through or thin-liquidity weekend pressure. You Might Also Like

While the market argues about XRP price levels, the ledger underneath it is assembling something more ambitious: a full stack of compliance-native DeFi rails aimed at banks, funds, and treasury desks. Here is what is already live, what is in validator voting right now, and why the whole bet could still fail.

Summary

XRP Ledger is expanding its institutional DeFi infrastructure with compliance focused features including a permissioned DEX, native lending, and tokenized asset support. XRPL contributors are advancing XLS 65 and XLS 66 through validator voting to introduce fixed term lending designed for regulated financial institutions. Ripple’s RLUSD and more than $3 billion in tokenized real world assets are strengthening XRPL’s push to become a compliance ready blockchain for institutional finance. The XRP Ledger has spent most of its fourteen-year life being described as a payments chain. Fast, cheap, boring. The description was accurate for a long time, and it also missed what has been happening on the ledger over the past eighteen months. Piece by piece, amendment by amendment, XRPL contributors and Ripple have been laying down infrastructure for something the rest of the industry mostly talks about in conference keynotes: DeFi that regulated institutions can actually use.

The phrase itself, institutional DeFi, tends to produce eye rolls among crypto natives. It sounds like a contradiction, a way of saying decentralized finance with the decentralization filed off. But the buildout on XRPL is concrete enough, and far enough along, that it deserves a serious look. As of this week, the two amendments that would bring native fixed-term lending to the ledger, XLS-65 and XLS-66, are in active validator voting following the Rippled v3.1.0 release in late January. Tokenized real-world assets on XRPL have passed $3 billion. Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD crossed $1 billion in supply and ranks among the fastest-growing stablecoins in the market. A permissioned exchange layer with protocol-level compliance controls has gone live. None of this made much noise. That is partly the point.

The core bet: compliance at the protocol layer Every major smart contract chain has tried to court institutions, and almost all of them have run into the same wall. Banks and asset managers cannot deploy client capital into open pools where the counterparty might be a sanctioned entity, a mixer, or a teenager with a hardware wallet. The standard industry answer has been to bolt compliance on afterward: whitelisted front ends, wrapped permissioned versions of open protocols, off-chain legal agreements draped over on-chain positions.

XRPL made the opposite bet. Instead of adding compliance on top, its contributors embedded identity and access controls into the protocol itself. Three primitives do most of the work.

Credentials, linked to decentralized identifiers, let trusted issuers attest on-chain that a wallet belongs to a KYC-verified entity, an accredited investor, or a firm with a specific regulatory permission. The attestation lives on the ledger. The underlying documents do not.

Permissioned Domains, which went live under the XLS-80 amendment with 91% validator support, use those credentials to gate access to specific markets. A domain can require that every participant holds a valid credential from an approved issuer. Anyone outside the domain simply cannot trade inside it.

The Permissioned DEX extends the ledger’s native order book exchange, which has existed since 2012, into these controlled environments. Regulated firms can run foreign exchange or tokenized asset markets with full AML and KYC enforcement while settlement still happens on a public blockchain. Activation followed within weeks of validator consensus earlier this year.

Alongside those three sit the supporting pieces: Multi-Purpose Tokens, a standard that embeds metadata and transfer rules at the asset layer so structured financial instruments do not need custom smart contracts; Batch Transactions for atomic delivery-versus-payment, the settlement pattern institutions use for cross-asset swaps; and Token Escrow support extended to IOUs and MPTs.

The design philosophy separates XRPL from nearly everything else in the market. On Ethereum or Solana, an institution wanting a compliant venue has to build one out of general-purpose parts and hope the auditors sign off. On XRPL, the compliance tooling is the venue.

The lending protocol is the real test Infrastructure is necessary but not sufficient. The feature that will decide whether institutional DeFi on XRPL is a real business or a well-documented ghost town is the lending protocol, defined in the XLS-65 and XLS-66 specifications.

The two amendments work as a pair. XLS-65 introduces Single Asset Vaults, which aggregate liquidity from depositors and issue vault shares that can be transferable or locked depending on configuration. XLS-66 builds the actual credit machinery on top: fixed-term, fixed-rate loans with preset amortization schedules, issued through on-ledger contracts between lenders and borrowers.

The design choices are telling. Where open DeFi lending runs on overcollateralization and instant liquidations, the XRPL protocol supports uncollateralized loans with off-chain underwriting. Borrower evaluation, credit scoring, and risk management stay where institutions already have mature models, while issuance, repayment, and default records live on the ledger. First-loss capital structures add a protection layer familiar to anyone who has looked at securitization. Vault operators can restrict participation to KYC and AML compliant entities at the protocol level, which is precisely the feature that separates this from open DeFi.

Doppler Finance, a tokenized capital markets infrastructure firm, put the honest caveat on record this week: a protocol can define how lending activity is recorded and executed on-chain, but it cannot, by itself, create an institutional credit market. Underwriting, treasury management, portfolio monitoring, and regulatory oversight all need operational layers that no amendment can ship. XLS-66 provides the rails. Someone still has to run trains on them.

There is at least one committed passenger. Evernorth, one of the largest XRP treasury firms, has said it will make the lending protocol a core pillar of its digital asset strategy, describing it as a potential fundamental shift in how institutional liquidity moves on-chain and pointing to what it called a multi-billion-dollar annual yield opportunity for the XRP community. Treasury firms holding large XRP positions have an obvious incentive here: idle tokens earn nothing, and a native, compliance-gated lending market is the most direct way to change that.

The amendments are testable on devnet now, and developers can integrate against the lending stack ahead of mainnet activation. The open question is the validator vote. XRPL amendments require sustained support above the 80% threshold for two weeks before activation, and that process can stretch for months with no guarantee of passage. The framework is credible. The activation path is not automatic.

How amendments actually pass, and why it takes forever Because so much of the XRPL story now hangs on validator votes, it is worth understanding the machinery, which differs from every other major chain’s governance.

XRPL has no token voting and no foundation decree. Protocol changes ship as amendments inside validator software releases, and each amendment activates only after more than 80% of trusted validators signal support continuously for two full weeks. Dip below the threshold for an hour and the clock resets. The validator set doing the voting is defined by Unique Node Lists, the curated rosters of validators that operators choose to trust, populated by exchanges, universities, infrastructure firms, and long-time community operators across jurisdictions.

The design makes XRPL upgrades slow, conservative, and hard to capture, three adjectives that read as insults on crypto Twitter and as compliments in a bank’s vendor-risk review. It also means every roadmap date in this article carries an implicit asterisk. Permissioned Domains cleared activation with 91% support, a comfortable margin. The lending amendments face a more complicated vote because they change the ledger’s risk surface in ways some conservative operators have historically resisted; earlier programmability proposals spent long stretches stuck below threshold while operators debated attack surface. The voting is live now following the v3.1.0 release, testable code is on devnet, and the realistic activation window stretches from weeks to quarters depending on how fast the holdouts move.

For traders, this creates a strange information asymmetry. Amendment support percentages are public, on-chain, and updated continuously, yet almost nobody prices them. Watching XLS-66 support climb toward 80% is about as close to a scheduled, verifiable catalyst as this market offers, and it sits in plain sight.

The competition is building the same thing with different parts XRPL is not the only chain that noticed institutions want compliant rails, and an honest assessment has to place the ledger against the two ecosystems actually holding the money.

Ethereum remains the default venue for tokenized institutional product, full stop. BlackRock’s tokenized fund complex, Franklin Templeton’s on-chain money market operation, and the JPMorgan digital asset stack all touched Ethereum first, and the chain holds roughly 68% of global DeFi deposits along with about 70% of stablecoin supply. Its institutional DeFi answer is assembled from general-purpose parts: permissioned pool deployments of Aave, KYC-gated hooks on Uniswap V4, wrapper tokens with transfer restrictions, and off-chain agreements binding it together. The approach works, and its weakness is exactly what XRPL is betting on: every assembled solution is bespoke, every audit is novel, and the compliance burden lands on the builder instead of the protocol.

Solana has moved fastest recently. Token-2022 extensions gave issuers protocol-adjacent controls, transfer hooks, confidential amounts, and interest-bearing logic, and the Solana Developer Platform launched in March with Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union attached. Solana’s pitch is throughput plus tooling; its gap is that compliance remains a token-level option instead of a market-level guarantee, and its validator economics and outage history still appear in institutional risk memos even after the Firedancer-era reliability turnaround.

XRPL’s differentiation survives the comparison in one specific sense: it is the only major venue where identity, market access, and settlement controls are native ledger objects that no application can misconfigure. The cost of that purity is a smaller developer surface, a shallower liquidity base, and no general-purpose composability on mainnet. Institutions choosing between the three are effectively choosing which risk they prefer: Ethereum’s complexity, Solana’s history, or XRPL’s emptiness.

Three billion dollars of quiet traction Skeptics can reasonably ask whether any of this is being used. The answer, increasingly, is yes, though the numbers remain small next to the giants.

Over $3 billion in tokenized real-world assets currently sit on XRPL, which places the ledger inside the top ten chains for RWA value. The most striking single data point came from a pilot earlier this year in which Ripple and JPMorgan processed a tokenized U.S. Treasury redemption in under five seconds, settling on XRPL what normally crawls through legacy market plumbing. The ledger also recorded its first month with more than $1 billion in stablecoin volume, and RLUSD passed the $1 billion supply mark while expanding into consortium settlement arrangements.

On the payments and FX side, XRP itself does structural work that most native assets do not. The ledger routes trades through XRP automatically whenever doing so improves pricing, a mechanism called autobridging. If there is no direct liquidity between two stablecoins or two tokenized currencies, the trade hops through XRP. The mechanism works inside the new permissioned environments as well as on the public DEX, though trades cannot bridge between the two. Every account reserve, every transaction fee, and a growing share of FX routing runs through the native asset, which ties institutional adoption of the ledger back to demand for the token in a way that is mechanical instead of narrative.

That linkage matters for anyone holding XRP, which trades near $1.08 at the time of writing after spending weeks pinned around the psychologically loaded $1.00 level. The token is still down more than 50% over twelve months, and the gap between infrastructure progress and price performance has become one of the more uncomfortable facts in the ecosystem. Readers who want the market-structure side of that story can find it in our coverage of why the broader market has been trading risk-off since the spring.

The gap XRPL still has to close For all the compliance tooling, XRPL remains a shallow DeFi venue by the numbers that crypto natives actually check. Chain TVL sits far below rivals: Solana holds roughly $9 billion in DeFi deposits and BNB Chain about $6.5 billion, while XRPL’s locked value is a fraction of either. Deep liquidity attracts deep liquidity, and the ledger has not had it.

Part of the problem is technical, and it is being addressed with unusual candor. XRPL’s native automated market maker, live since 2024, launched with only a constant product curve at a time when roughly 60% of AMM volume across major ecosystems runs through concentrated liquidity designs. In late May, a draft amendment titled AMM Swappable Curves was filed on the XRPL standards repository, proposing three pluggable curve types: constant product, concentrated liquidity, and StableSwap, with a fully programmable Smart AMM reserved for a follow-up specification. Existing pools would stay untouched. If it passes, the ledger’s biggest capital-efficiency gap starts to close. If it stalls in the amendment process, XRPL keeps asking institutions to trade on 2024 infrastructure.

The other gap is programmability. XRPL mainnet deliberately avoids general-purpose smart contracts, which keeps the attack surface small and the behavior predictable, qualities institutions like, but it also means builders who need full flexibility have to go elsewhere. The ecosystem’s answer is a dual track: measured programmability on mainnet through Smart Escrows, which let developers write custom release conditions into the existing escrow primitive, and a live EVM sidechain bridged via Axelar for teams that want Solidity and full composability. Whether liquidity follows that split or gets fragmented by it remains an open question.

Privacy is the next frontier, and the strangest one The roadmap item that best captures XRPL’s institutional positioning is also the one that sounds least like crypto: confidential transfers. Multi-Purpose Tokens are getting zero-knowledge-proof-based encryption of transaction amounts and balances, letting institutions move tokenized assets and manage positions without broadcasting their book to every competitor running a block explorer, while preserving selective disclosure for regulators and auditors.

Full transparency, it turns out, is a bug for professional money, not a feature. No trading desk wants its inventory legible in real time. The XRPL community has moved past exploration into prototyping ZKP integrations with research and compliance teams, with confidential MPT transfers slated as the first milestone. Privacy with accountability is the stated frame: encrypted by default, provable on demand.

Put the pieces in sequence and the shape of the strategy becomes clear. Identity first, through credentials. Access control second, through domains and the permissioned DEX. Assets third, through MPTs and tokenization. Credit fourth, through the lending protocol. Confidentiality fifth, through ZKPs. It reads less like a crypto roadmap and more like someone rebuilding the back office of a mid-sized bank, one amendment at a time.

The sidechain wildcard One more piece complicates the tidy mainnet story: the XRPL EVM sidechain, live and bridged through Axelar, running on eXRP as gas. Its job is to catch the builders mainnet’s minimalism turns away, Solidity teams who want full composability with a route into XRPL liquidity and identity features. The dual-track design is defensible, mainnet stays lean while experimentation happens next door, but it imports the exact problem Ethereum has spent years managing: liquidity and users split across environments with a bridge in between, and bridges remain the industry’s most reliably exploited component. If institutional flows land on mainnet while DeFi innovation concentrates on the sidechain, XRPL ends up running two half-ecosystems instead of one whole one. The optimists’ version is that the sidechain functions as a proving ground, with successful patterns graduating into mainnet amendments the way ZKP research moved from prototype toward the confidential transfer roadmap alongside partners such as Hidden Road, the prime broker Ripple acquired to give institutional clients a familiar front door. Which version plays out is a 2027 question; the split exists today.

RLUSD is the demand engine hiding in plain sight If the lending protocol is the supply side of XRPL’s institutional buildout, the stablecoin is the demand side, and it deserves more attention than it usually gets.

RLUSD launched under a New York trust charter, which put it in the small club of stablecoins that compliance departments can approve without a fight, and its growth since has outpaced nearly every peer on a percentage basis: past $1 billion in supply, expanding into multi-issuer consortium arrangements, and increasingly the settlement leg in XRPL’s FX corridors. The strategic logic is circular by design. Stablecoin corridors generate ledger volume, ledger volume generates XRP fee burn and autobridge demand, and a trusted on-ledger dollar makes every other institutional product viable, because tokenized Treasuries need something to trade against and vaults need a funding currency.

The lending protocol makes the loop explicit. The first wave of XLS-66 vaults is widely expected to be RLUSD-funded, with institutional borrowers taking fixed-term dollar credit against off-chain underwriting. If that market reaches even single-digit billions, XRPL hosts a native short-term credit curve denominated in a regulated stablecoin, which is the kind of boring financial primitive that payments desks, market makers, and treasury managers actually budget for. Whether regulated entities deploy capital into RLUSD-funded vaults at scale is, in one sentence, the whole question the next two quarters will answer.

The watchlist for the next two quarters For readers who want to track the buildout instead of the discourse, the roadmap compresses to a short list of verifiable checkpoints.

• XLS-65 and XLS-66 validator support crossing and holding the 80% threshold, the single highest-signal event on the board.

• Confidential MPT transfers shipping in the stated first-quarter window, XRPL’s first production zero-knowledge feature.

• Permissioned DEX volume and domain creation after activation, the difference between compliance theater and used infrastructure.

• MPT integration with the native DEX, scheduled alongside Smart Escrows, which lets tokenized instruments trade against XRP and IOUs directly.

• The AMM Swappable Curves amendment advancing from draft to vote, closing the concentrated liquidity gap.

• Follow-through from Evernorth and any second public institutional commitment to the lending protocol, because one anchor tenant is a pilot and two is a market.

Each item is public, dated, and falsifiable, which is more than can be said for most crypto roadmaps.

What could still go wrong The bear case does not require much imagination, because pieces of it are already visible.

• Validator activation risk is real and immediate. XLS-65 and XLS-66 need sustained supermajority support, and amendment votes have stalled before. Every month of delay is a month rival chains spend courting the same institutions.

• Infrastructure is not demand. XRPL has built the rails ahead of proven appetite, and outside Evernorth’s stated intent, no regulated lender has committed capital publicly. The chain could end up with the best-documented empty credit market in crypto.

• The competition is not standing still. Ethereum remains the default for tokenized funds from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, and Solana launched a developer platform this spring with Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union as early adopters. XRPL’s compliance-native design is a differentiator, not a moat.

• Regulatory frameworks cut both ways. The same clarity that lets institutions touch permissioned DeFi also lets them demand terms, and there is no assurance the economics of on-ledger credit will beat what prime brokers already offer off-chain.

There is also a subtler risk: that permissioned DeFi succeeds and simply fails to matter for XRP. If activity concentrates in gated domains trading tokenized Treasuries against RLUSD, the native asset’s role could shrink to fees and reserves, a payments-era footprint under an institutional-era ledger. Autobridging and escrow denominated in XRP push against that outcome, but the tension is real and worth watching in the data rather than the marketing.

A ledger playing a long game Step back far enough and the XRPL story inverts the usual crypto sequence. Most chains launch permissionless, attract speculation, and then spend years retrofitting the controls institutions require. XRPL is running the film backward: build the controls first, accept years of looking sleepy next to memecoin casinos, and wait for the moment when regulated capital decides it finally wants on-chain settlement, credit, and FX.

That moment may be closer than the price chart suggests. Tokenization has become the fastest-growing corner of the industry, stablecoin legislation has unlocked bank participation across several jurisdictions, and the first generation of tokenized funds is now large enough to need somewhere to borrow, lend, and hedge. The chains that win that flow will be the ones where a compliance officer can sign off without a novel-length risk memo.

Whether XRPL becomes one of them comes down to two things it does not fully control: an 80% validator threshold, and the willingness of institutions to move from pilots to production. The infrastructure argument has been made, and made well. The adoption argument is still being written, one vault and one loan at a time. For a network that has been declared irrelevant more times than any other top-ten asset, quietly shipping the plumbing while nobody watches might be the most on-brand strategy available.

For readers newer to the mechanics referenced here, our explainers on Ripple Prime and institutional brokerage, consortium stablecoins, and the earlier lending and escrow roadmap cover the building blocks in more depth.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 3, 2026.

The amount of XRP tokens locked in Ripple’s escrow accounts continues to drop, according to XRP advocate and legal expert Bill Morgan. Morgan revealed that the portion of XRP held in escrow has now slipped below 32.5% of the total supply. This figure marks a significant shift, sparking renewed debate over longstanding claims that escrow accounts hold between 35% and 40% of all XRP—a range now proven outdated.

Morgan noted that nearly a year ago, escrow accounts constituted close to 36% of all XRP in circulation, but this share has been gradually decreasing over time. While Ripple unlocks 1 billion XRP from escrow every month, only a fraction is returned to escrow accounts. Naturally, this means the locked balance gets smaller as months pass.

Bill Morgan pointed out that the share of XRP held in escrow has now dipped under 32.5%, yet some market watchers continue to cite outdated figures of 35% or even 40%.

Morgan explained that, on average, around 300 million XRP released each month are not relocked in escrow. These tokens, instead, are deployed in institutional partnerships, liquidity services, and ecosystem development. This use case has steadily reduced the share Ripple holds in escrow accounts over time.

Mini glossary: An escrow account refers to token balances locked under a predetermined schedule and released over time. Ripple uses this system to plan the future supply of XRP entering the market.

Challenge to outdated supply dataDespite blockchain data being publicly available, Morgan expressed concern that outdated supply statistics continue to circulate. He especially called out some Bitcoin supporters who still claim Ripple controls more than half of all XRP, dismissing these assertions as inaccurate in light of current numbers.

Should current trends persist, Morgan estimates that by July next year, the share of XRP in escrow accounts could fall below 29% of total supply. This would mean Ripple’s locked token holdings will exert even less influence on overall XRP liquidity.

The fact that Ripple relocks most of the 1 billion XRP released each month into escrow restricts the net amount entering the market, which helps allay concerns over potential sell pressure.

Market sees limited price impactMorgan’s latest remarks came just after Ripple completed its planned release of 1 billion XRP for July. While such monthly unlocks often raise concerns about possible sell pressure, Ripple’s history shows that most released tokens are relocked rather than sold, mitigating market anxiety.

The most recent event did not trigger a significant negative market reaction. XRP’s price climbed between 3% and 4% to break past $1.10, ultimately reaching $1.12. Persistent demand at higher price levels increased confidence that the $1.10 region may now act as a key support, rather than resistance.

IndicatorLevelCurrent escrow account shareBelow 32.5%Share roughly one year agoClose to 36%Monthly unlock from escrow1 billion XRPAverage not relocked300 million XRPCurrent price$1.12These disclosures have reignited debate around XRP’s tokenomics. Supporters see the dwindling escrow balance as a sign of a more market-oriented and dispersed supply structure, which they argue leads to healthier asset distribution over time.

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.

Brinc and Ripple have jointly announced a new accelerator program in Hong Kong aimed at supporting early stage cryptocurrency and financial technology startups. Unveiled on July 3, the Hong Kong Financial Innovation Programme will run for 12 weeks, with a particular focus on blockchain-based financial services built on the XRP Ledger platform.

Program scope and objectivesThe accelerator is open to companies ranging from the pre-seed stage up to Series A, targeting teams working on practical digital finance solutions for the broader Asian market. Applications have officially opened via Brinc’s dedicated submission platform.

The program is designed especially for founders developing products in cross-border payments, foreign exchange operations, trade finance, lending solutions, stablecoins, tokenization, settlement networks, and AI-powered payment systems. Selected startups will receive mentorship over the 12-week program from experts in finance, blockchain technology, and business development.

Brinc emphasizes that the program is not only about advancing technology, but also about fostering commercial partnerships and creating real market use cases.

Participants will have opportunities to connect with potential investors, corporate partners, and financial institutions. Eligible projects can also apply for grant funding that does not require any equity transfer, allowing startups to develop products without diluting their ownership structure.

XRPL infrastructure at the forefrontAll participating startups will build their products on the XRP Ledger. Known as Ripple’s native blockchain, XRPL stands out for its rapid transaction speeds, relatively low fees, and suitability for payment and settlement applications. The program is oriented toward developing solutions that can fulfill real financial needs—especially in Hong Kong and across Asian markets.

Mini glossary: Tokenization refers to creating a digital representation of a real world or financial asset on the blockchain. A settlement network is the infrastructure that finalizes and records financial transactions between parties.

Regulatory landscape evolves in Hong KongHong Kong is moving forward with its regulated stablecoin market, having recently introduced a new licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers. Following two license approvals earlier this year, authorities expect to see the first Hong Kong dollar backed stablecoins roll out by mid-2026.

These regulatory developments make the timing of the accelerator especially significant. A clearer regulatory framework could enhance the prospects for startups building payment infrastructure and digital finance solutions to achieve commercial success in the region.

New technical proposal for XRPLMeanwhile, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz has put forward a new transaction ordering system for the XRPL decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM). The aim is to reduce risks of front running and sandwich attacks—both of which can harm the integrity of decentralized trading—and to enhance the predictability of transaction execution on the network.

David Schwartz’s proposed transaction ordering system is designed to limit front running risks for DEX and AMM transactions on XRPL.

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

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified the XRP Ledger as one of the public blockchain networks used by financial institutions for stablecoin issuance in its latest report. This emphasis signals growing institutional attention to the XRP Ledger in the emerging field of regulated digital assets and tokenization.

Key findings from the IMF reportIn its study entitled “The Rise of Tokenization: Deciphering New Trends in Payments and Asset Tokenization,” the IMF explores how banks are leveraging blockchain technology to transform payment, settlement, and asset management processes. The Fund notes that while some financial institutions still rely on private ledgers, an increasing number are turning to permissionless networks to benefit from greater interoperability and broader market access.

The IMF highlights that certain institutions prefer permissionless blockchains for regulated stablecoin issuance, as this approach offers enhanced interoperability and wider reach in the market.

Among the examples cited in the report is Société Générale’s euro-denominated stablecoin, EUR CoinVertible. According to the IMF, this asset is deployed not only on the XRP Ledger, but also on Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar networks. Société Générale, a leading France-based banking group, is recognized as one of the longstanding pillars of the European financial system.

The impact of tokenization on financeThe IMF describes tokenization as a transformative trend reshaping global finance. By converting real-world assets—such as currencies, bonds, equities, and other financial instruments—into blockchain-based tokens, the report suggests ownership transfers can be streamlined, settlement times reduced, and operational costs lowered. The Fund also points out that tokenization can increase transparency and reduce reliance on traditional intermediaries.

Beyond these efficiencies, the report emphasizes tokenization’s potential to boost liquidity, minimize settlement risk, and broaden access to financial services. Within this context, public blockchain networks are increasingly seen as viable infrastructures for regulated financial products.

Why is institutional interest noteworthy?IMF Senior Economist Itai Agur recently characterized tokenization and programmable money as the next phase for financial markets. Agur has explained that merging programmable money with tokenized assets—enabled through smart contracts—could automate processes and deliver faster, more cost-effective, and more efficient transactions.

This perspective underscores the rationale for grouping XRP Ledger alongside Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar in discussions about next-generation financial infrastructure. As banks broaden their initiatives in stablecoins and asset tokenization, the XRP Ledger continues to attract heightened institutional interest among public blockchain networks.

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.

Thu 02 Jul 2026 ▪ 6 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

Capital movements within the blockchain very often precede the price dynamics visible on trading terminals. While the crypto market is going through a phase of uncertainty and successive corrections, a major divergence is emerging on the Ripple network. This phenomenon of complete disconnection between different categories of investors raises questions about the medium-term trajectory of the token. Far from the emotional reactions that often characterize the general public, on-chain data reveals large-scale institutional activity of rare intensity. Understanding this strategic positioning is crucial to anticipate the structure of upcoming market cycles.

In Brief Whales take advantage of the XRP drop to quietly strengthen their positions, while many retail investors succumb to panic. On-chain data shows growing concentration of XRP reserves in the hands of large holders, accompanied by a sharp increase in withdrawals from exchanges. This accumulation strategy could reduce the available supply on the market and encourage a rebound in XRP, even though such concentration also increases volatility risks. The Opportunism of XRP Whales : The Market Rift The behavior of retail investors facing the recent fluctuations of XRP perfectly illustrates the psychological mechanisms governing market turning points. According to recent data, the drop of Ripple’s crypto has intensified to reach a local bottom, profoundly altering the distribution of forces at play :

The decline of XRP’s price down to the threshold of $1.04 “may have triggered fear among smaller traders, but large investors saw this as a buying opportunity,” according to market analyst Xaif Crypto ; The altcoin initiated a technical rebound to settle at $1.06 ; The underlying blockchain activity indicates growing accumulation by whales rather than a true wave of widespread selling. This configuration reveals a massive value transfer from the less capitalized wallets to the most influential entities in the ecosystem. In behavioral finance, these periods of strong correction are called capitulation phases for the general public, which tends to sell at a loss triggered by anxiety. Historic whales, drawing on their experience of previous cycles, precisely exploit these moments of collective panic to build or reinforce their positions at heavily discounted prices.

The history of global financial markets, and more specifically cryptos, shows that these phases of discreet accumulation, conducted away from public view, very often precede a sustained trend reversal as soon as the retail selling pressure is completely exhausted.

Control Over Centralized Platforms and the Explosion of Outflows Beyond a simple assessment of buying dynamics, on-chain analysis tools reveal a structural change in XRP distribution on the main global exchanges. A technical indicator proves particularly revealing of this trend: “the All CEX whale spread,” which measures the holding gap between investor categories on centralized platforms. This indicator has risen to 50.9%, indicating factually that whales now control a significantly larger share of XRP reserves held on exchanges.

This phenomenon is not limited to a single platform, as Binance is also approaching the critical threshold of 50% dominance by whales, confirming that large holders continuously increase their influence over the liquidity available on the world’s largest exchanges.

Such supply concentration is accompanied by another major trend: a spectacular increase in token withdrawals to external custody solutions. Data from the Coinbase platform show that outflows initiated by very large wallets have accelerated sharply. Transfers involving volumes greater than 1 million XRP have jumped, rising from 10% to 25.7% of the total activity on this exchange within just two weeks.

Thus, these waves of massive withdrawals constitute fundamentally bullish signals. They indicate that these large-scale investors choose to secure their assets in private wallets for long-term holding rather than leaving them on exchanges where they might be liquidated at the slightest market disturbance.

Between Historic Seasonality and Risks of Supply Centralization To complete this analysis of the XRP ecosystem, it is important to consider a temporal dimension specific to the crypto’s history. Market cycles often follow recurring seasonal trends that overlay the movements of large investors. Historically, the month of July has established itself as one of the most favorable periods for XRP.

This historic seasonal strength triggers many speculations among observers, who believe that this favorable calendar could opportunely align with the current wave of accumulation by whales. While past data do not guarantee future performance, they provide a framework frequently integrated by fund managers into their predictive models to anticipate the end of latent consolidation phases.

The impact of these coordinated moves could redefine the balance of supply and demand in the coming weeks, opening the way to contrasting market prospects. By appropriating a predominant share of liquidity and moving these tokens off the circuit, whales are causing a progressive drying up of the available supply.

In the short term, if this accumulation phase continues and the general sentiment of the crypto market improves, even a slight return of demand from retail buyers could cause a rapid price appreciation, amplified by the scarcity of tokens available for sale on exchanges.

However, such volume concentration in the hands of a small circle of actors also carries risks of manipulation or increased volatility, as the future decisions of these few large holders will have a disproportionate influence on the price of XRP.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Thu, 2/07/2026 - 16:16

Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, is migrating to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) at a remarkable pace, with on-chain volume surging 40-fold over the last six months alone.

Cover image via www.freepik.com

Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, keeps migrating to the native chain of the XRP cryptocurrency (at a rather remarkable pace). 

According to recent on-chain data, the volume of RLUSD circulating on the XRP Ledger has surged 40-fold over the last six months alone.  

A significant majority of Ripple's stablecoin used to reside on the Ethereum blockchain, and this fact would be constantly brought up by XRP detractors to showcase the alleged lack of utility of the cryptocurrency's native chain. This trend was rather lasting, given that only 17% of all RLUSD in circulation was sitting on the XRP Ledger as recently as April.

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However, the XRPL's share of the total supply has grown dramatically over the past few months. Now, the figure has skyrocketed to as much as 52%, which gives the XRPL a majority share of the total supply for the first time.

More competition As reported by U.Today, Ripple recently joined an unprecedented coalition of more than 140 financial and technological heavyweights, of the likes of Mastercard and BlackRock, to back "Open USD," which is a new US dollar-pegged stablecoin. 

The consortium positions Open USD as a shared, highly efficient utility for global payments.

However, Ripple's participation has raised some eyebrows, given that it has its own heavily regulated stablecoin.

For Ripple, participating in the highly ambitious Open USD initiative ensures the company remains at the center of global liquidity flows, but it remains to be seen how RLUSD will be able to compete with this new upstart. 

According to CoinGecko data, Tether (USDT) remains the biggest stablecoin with a market cap of $184 billion. 

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XRP, once a fixture in market debates, is now increasingly evaluated based on its on-chain activity and real-world use cases. The XRP Ledger boasts transaction finality in just 3 to 5 seconds while keeping fees low, an advantage that drives its adoption in Ripple’s cross-border payment solutions and bolsters XRP’s role as a functional digital asset.

Key data on network activityOn June 16, 2026, the XRP Ledger processed 769,646 transactions within a 24-hour span. During peak periods, successful payment transactions can exceed 2.7 million in a single day. These figures show that XRP network activity extends well beyond trading alone, with payment and transfer operations occupying a significant share of the network’s capacity.

The XRP Ledger is not limited to value transfer. It also supports native automated market maker functionality and oracle integrations, effectively incorporating core decentralized finance infrastructure directly into the network.

Mini glossary: Oracles bring off-chain data to on-chain applications, while automated market makers (AMMs) enable trading via liquidity pools rather than traditional order books.

Supply structure under scrutinyAccording to CoinGecko, approximately 62 billion XRP are currently in circulation, out of a near-100 billion total supply. Meanwhile, some 33–34 billion XRP remain locked in escrow accounts.

Ripple operates a schedule allowing up to 1 billion XRP to be released each month from escrow. Unused tokens are returned to these accounts. While this mechanism provides a level of transparency, the substantial reserves held in escrow continue to temper narratives about XRP’s scarcity.

The core question for long-term outlooks centers on how much Ripple’s commercial growth actually translates into direct demand for XRP.

RLUSD’s rise and shifts in demandRipple now lets customers complete payment transactions either using XRP or its own stablecoin, RLUSD. This creates uncertainty over whether an expanding client base will lead directly to equal growth in XRP demand.

As of August 2025, RLUSD’s market capitalization surpassed $611 million, and it continued to grow in subsequent periods. This trend illustrates RLUSD’s emerging visibility as an alternative settlement asset within the Ripple ecosystem.

Ripple remains recognized as a financial technology firm specializing in blockchain-based payment solutions, with XRP as the open-market native asset underpinning these platforms.

Regulatory clarity and the evolving networkIn 2025, Ripple’s legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission ended in a $125 million settlement. The court ruled that programmatic XRP sales on public crypto exchanges did not constitute securities offerings. However, certain institutional sales by Ripple were deemed to have breached securities regulations.

This decision has given XRP a clearer regulatory status in the US than many other altcoins. In terms of governance, the network also exhibits a more decentralized structure: Ripple operates just one of the 35 validators on its default trusted list, while the XRPL Foundation now plays a more prominent role in network administration.

With a current market capitalization of around $65.9 billion, XRP ranks among the largest crypto assets. This scale suggests that many of the network’s current strengths may already be factored into its price.

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

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) developer community is currently buzzing about the successful return of a highly anticipated network upgrade.

The "Batch" amendment, which was previously delayed due to security concerns, has been merged back into the core repository and is now queued for validator voting.

The announcement was made by XRPL core developer Denis Angell, who confirmed the integration following a rigorous period of testing and review.

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"Batch is BACK!!" Angell declared on X (formerly Twitter). "After an attack-athon, a security audit, and 4 reviews, the batch is officially merged back into the xrpld repo and will be up for voting in the next release."

Angell accompanied his announcement with a quote from Confucius: "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake." 

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The pull request has been officially merged from Angell's branch into the development branch of the XRPLF/rippled repository.

What the amendment means for XRPLProminent XRPL community validator and commentator Vet praised the core development team in light of the most recent development. "Massive shoutout to Denis and the whole core dev community for prioritizing the rework with huge amounts of security audits," Vet posted.

An "atomic" transaction means that a series of operations is executed as a single unit. Either all the transactions within the bundle succeed together. 

According to Vet, this atomic bundling capability unlocks crucial new functionalities for the network.

Users can bundle a "send" and a "receive" transaction together, ensuring that a token swap only executes if both parties fulfill their end of the trade simultaneously.

Developers can bundle complex interactions into a single transaction block.

Network validators will vote on its activation in an upcoming rippled release.

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 recently shared a vision for the future of digital payments. "The future of payments will be multichain, interoperable, and built on institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure," said the Ripple President.

The future of payments will be multichain, interoperable, and built on institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure.

Our focus is simple: continue making the XRPL the leading blockchain for institutional payments – and a natural home for the next generation of key regulated… https://t.co/8Pc5Yleskr

— Monica Long (@MonicaLongSF) June 30, 2026 Long was reacting to recent developments, including Ripple joining the Open USD stablecoin as a day-one integration partner, highlighting the company's commitment to open, multichain infrastructure that supports institutional adoption across the digital asset ecosystem.

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Open USD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, was launched by a consortium of more than 140 financial and technology companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase, on Tuesday.

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The roll call of backers resembles a cross-section of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Ripple, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Google and Shopify are all listed as founding partners.

With financial institutions showing growing interest in blockchain-based settlement and regulated stablecoins, Ripple President Long highlights the company's long-term strategy for expanding the role of the XRP Ledger, XRP and RLUSD in institutional finance.

XRP, XRPL and RLUSD vision outlinedAccording to Long, Ripple's focus remains simple: to continue making the XRP Ledger the leading blockchain for institutional payments. This demonstrates that Ripple is positioning the XRP Ledger as infrastructure for institutions seeking blockchain-based settlement solutions.

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Ripple is also concentrating its efforts to make the XRP Ledger a natural home for the next generation of key regulated stablecoins while growing the utility and adoption of RLUSD and XRP globally.

Long's comments show Ripple's commitment to enhancing the real-world utility and adoption of XRP alongside RLUSD as institutional demand continues.

Ripple Prime processes over $3 trillion annually on behalf of over 300 institutional clients, according to Mike Higgins. During a recent discussion, the Ripple Prime CEO shared where the infrastructure is headed next in an effort to bring the prime brokerage and clearing layer directly onto the XRP Ledger.

JPMorgan has voiced its support for the CLARITY Act, a legislative proposal designed to bring clearer rules to digital assets in the United States. Arguing that a transparent and consistent regulatory framework is vital for the growth of the crypto sector, the bank also cautioned that regulation should not be rushed.

Cautious optimism alongside support for regulationIn a joint opinion piece, JPMorgan executives Umar Farooq and Peter Muriungi stated that digital assets have moved beyond the realm of experimentation and are now becoming core elements of modern finance. The pair highlighted the growing use of digital assets in payment systems, trading, settlement, and cross-border transactions.

Umar Farooq and Peter Muriungi emphasized that digital assets have left behind their experimental phase, and are now a visible part of the financial infrastructure, from payments to international transfers.

According to the executives, the next frontier in financial innovation will be tokenization and programmable money. By moving real-world assets onto blockchain networks and automating transactions through smart contracts, processes such as settlement can be accelerated, costs lowered, and global payments made more efficient.

Glossary: Tokenization refers to creating a digital representation of real-world assets—such as stocks, bonds, or real estate—on a blockchain. Programmable money describes digital currencies that can transfer automatically when certain conditions are met.

Still, JPMorgan stressed that innovation should be matched by robust safeguards. The bank argued that an effective legal framework must clearly define consumer protections, market integrity, and the responsibilities of regulatory bodies. Without these, there is a risk that vulnerabilities will shift to less well-supervised areas.

Why this matters for Ripple and XRPThis approach carries particular significance for XRP and Ripple. Ripple has long grappled with regulatory uncertainty in the US. Its high-profile legal battle with the SEC concluded in August of last year. Despite some notable court victories for Ripple, a comprehensive framework governing the oversight of digital assets remains unresolved.

The CLARITY Act is designed to reduce this uncertainty and distribute regulatory responsibilities more clearly. With more defined rules, banks, fintechs, developers, and institutional investors could be expected to place greater trust in blockchain-based financial products.

Potential boost for institutional adoptionClearer regulation could provide a favorable environment for Ripple, which aims to enable faster and lower-cost cross-border payments. As the legal landscape becomes more defined, financial institutions may be more inclined to integrate Ripple’s payment technology and use XRP as an on-demand liquidity bridge asset.

JPMorgan’s support highlights a growing shift toward blockchain-backed financial infrastructure on a broader scale. Should the CLARITY Act become law, it is expected to reduce at least part of the regulatory uncertainty seen as a major obstacle to institutional participation.

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.

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XRP and HYPE ETFs saw significant net inflows in June 2026, amounting to $59 million and $161 million, respectively, according to CoinDesk. This development contrasts with the broader trend of outflows in Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs during the same period. These inflows may indicate increased institutional interest in these assets, supported by regulatory developments such as the CLARITY Act for XRP and strong on-chain demand for HYPE. XRP’s price hovered around $1.30 in early June, while HYPE reached approximately $57, close to its all-time high.

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Key Takeaways XRP and HYPE ETFs’ net inflows in June suggest growing institutional interest, contrasting with outflows in other crypto ETFs. Market pricing suggests that the inflow into XRP ETFs could influence XRP’s price, potentially pushing it higher. Regulatory clarity and robust on-chain demand appear to support these inflows and the positive market sentiment surrounding XRP and HYPE. What to Watch Watch for the potential impact of regulatory developments, particularly the passage of the CLARITY Act, which could further influence XRP’s price movement. Additionally, any significant announcements from major asset managers regarding XRP ETFs might affect the pricing. Observing XRP’s ability to break resistance levels, such as $1.45, and market reactions to broader crypto trends will be crucial in the coming days.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h July 6 1.8% — — View market → July 6 26% — — View market → July 6 55.5% — — View market → July 6 1.4% — — View market → July 6 2.2% — — View market →

The XRP Ledger added 4,941 new wallets in a single day on June 30, its strongest network growth spike in over three months, even as $XRP struggles to hold the psychologically important $1 mark.

According to on-chain analytics firm @SantimentData, the inflection point came on June 25, when XRP fell to 19-month lows near $1.01. Rather than triggering a sell-off, the drop appears to have drawn in fresh buyers. The XRP Ledger added 4,941 new wallets in a single day, its strongest network growth spike in over three months, and that surge is happening at the exact moment price sits closest to breaking below the psychologically important $1 level.

Each wallet on the XRP Ledger requires a small reserve deposit to activate, meaning each new account represents a deliberate decision to commit funds rather than a costless sign-up. That makes the 4,941 figure harder to dismiss as noise.

Sentiment Flips Bullish at the Worst Moment on the Chart Bullish sentiment outpaces bearish sentiment at a ratio of 3.7 to 1, the highest FOMO level around the token in three months. That shift is striking given the price action offers little obvious reason for optimism.

Santiment pointed to XRP's history of sharp rebounds, ongoing ETF momentum, and continued accumulation from larger holders as the drivers behind the optimism, even as price action stays ugly. Santiment data shows accumulation across all three large cohorts in June despite a 21% price dip, with the 10 million to 100 million XRP tier leading with 160 million XRP added, the strongest bullish signal of the group.

US spot XRP ETFs attracted $22.99 million in net inflows last week, extending their inflow streak to eight consecutive weeks. XRP ETFs have not recorded a single day of net outflows since June 3, although several sessions have ended with flat flows.

Context: A Token Under Pressure XRP entered 2026 in a corrective phase, trending near $1.80, and plunged to the $1.30 range at the start of March as the broader crypto winter triggered. The slide has continued since, with the token now defending a level not seen in over a year and a half.

Santiment said the open question is whether this wallet surge converts into sustained buying pressure or fades as short-term FOMO, and that with XRP sitting so close to $1.00, the coming sessions should reveal which way the on-chain demand breaks.

Sources
XRP Network Growth Surges With Buyers Defending the Key $1 Zone - Crypto Economy
XRP Demand Builds On-Chain Even as Price Sinks to 19-Month Low - Yahoo Finance
XRP Flirts With Falling Below $1 Despite Record Network Growth - Benzinga

Despite ongoing turbulence in the crypto ETF market putting pressure on many products, funds focused on XRP have stood out as a rare sector where institutional demand remains strong. According to SosoValue data, XRP ETFs attracted a total of $15.34 million in new inflows on the last trading day of June 29.

Bitwise leads the inflowsOf the total daily inflow on June 29, $11.94 million was funneled into Bitwise’s XRP ETF product, making Bitwise the fund with the highest daily inflow in this segment. Market data suggests that Bitwise clients were the main drivers of this positive momentum.

Recognized as a prominent asset manager specializing in digital assets, Bitwise provides institutional investment solutions across the crypto markets.

IndicatorDataTotal XRP ETF inflow on June 29$15.34 millionBitwise daily inflow on the same day$11.94 millionBitwise cumulative net inflow$505.17 millionSince the launch of the Bitwise XRP ETF in November 2025, its cumulative net inflow has reached $505.17 million. Despite a decline in XRP prices in recent months, inflows into the fund have largely continued, highlighting ongoing institutional interest in this product.

On June 29, of the $15.34 million flowing into XRP ETFs, $11.94 million was directed to the Bitwise fund, making it the dominant player for the day.

XRP stands out in ETF performanceOver the past three months, XRP ETFs have outperformed Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the wider group of crypto ETFs in daily performance. The key takeaway here is that while other products have continued to see outflows, inflows to XRP funds have remained stable.

The data indicates that institutional interest in XRP is gaining strength relative to larger market-cap assets. However, this resilience in ETF demand has not translated into equivalent gains in the XRP spot price.

In the past three months, XRP has surpassed both Bitcoin and Ethereum in ETF inflows, maintaining more balanced entries as other major crypto products faced ongoing weakness.

Price impact remains limitedAnalysts note that ongoing demand for XRP ETFs could potentially have a more visible mid-term impact on price. Nevertheless, there remains a noticeable disconnect between institutional fund inflows and actual spot market performance at this stage.

As a result, while robust inflows into XRP ETFs are drawing attention, additional data is needed before a clear price recovery trend can be confirmed.

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.