Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Ripple’s valuation in the private market has reached an estimated $50 billion, reflecting a 400% increase from its 2019 estimate of $10 billion. The new valuation coincided with a $750 million share buyback that enabled employees and early investors to sell shares to the company at the updated price.

Ripple’s growth driven by buyback and product expansionThis valuation increase comes amid Ripple’s ongoing legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a case that has spanned several years. Despite the regulatory headwinds, Ripple has expanded its operations globally, secured new licenses, launched the RLUSD stablecoin, and bolstered its digital asset custody and enterprise payment infrastructure via strategic acquisitions.

Ripple operates as a fintech company focused on enterprise blockchain payments and cross-border transaction solutions. Its latest initiatives are aimed at broadening the use and adoption of blockchain technology in institutional finance and global payments.

While the valuation of Ripple as a company does not directly affect the XRP token price, analysts note that a stronger capital base allows for accelerated development on the XRP Ledger, wider RLUSD adoption, and scaling up of institutional payment offerings. These developments have the potential to attract more banks, asset managers, and institutions and may support long-term demand for XRP.

Institutional outlook: Standard Chartered’s targetsInstitutional sentiment for XRP remains robust. Standard Chartered, one of the world’s leading international banking groups, recently published its long-term cryptocurrency outlook and reaffirmed its 2030 XRP target of $28. The bank also maintained targets of $500,000 for Bitcoin, $40,000 for Ethereum, and $2,000 for Solana, despite adjusting certain short-term forecasts.

Standard Chartered’s maintained $28 price target for XRP signals continued confidence in XRP’s expected participation in expanding markets for cross-border payments, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets.

Reaching the $28 mark would imply an approximately 2,500% rally from the current price of $1.08, according to market data provider CoinCodex. Achieving this long-term target would likely require increased institutional adoption, greater use of the XRP Ledger for tokenization and payments, steady ETF demand, and greater regulatory clarity in major financial markets.

AssetCurrent PriceStandard Chartered 2030 TargetPotential UpsideXRP$1.08$282,500%Bitcoin$68,000$500,000635%Ethereum$3,400$40,0001,076%Solana$150$2,0001,233%XRP’s recent performance reflects growing enterprise interest. On-chain data shows that XRP registered the highest average transaction size among major cryptocurrencies, a metric typically linked to institutional or enterprise-level transfers. Evernorth, a business division focused on digital health services, is reportedly increasing its use of XRP for treasury management, strengthening the trend toward enterprise capital movement within the network.

Mini dictionary: Evernorth is a health services company under Cigna, providing digital and data-driven solutions. Its enhanced use of XRP in treasury operations suggests a growing trend of blockchain applications beyond financial services.

Indicators of increasing institutional demandInvestors are also showing confidence by moving considerable amounts of XRP off Binance and into self-custody, suggesting a preference for long-term holding. In addition, US spot XRP ETFs have drawn more than $1.5 billion in cumulative net inflows, reducing the liquid supply on exchanges and increasing institutional exposure to the asset.

These developments—Ripple’s higher valuation, Standard Chartered’s reaffirmed forecast, surging institutional transaction sizes, growing treasury use, strong ETF inflows, and exchange outflows—point to sustained institutional confidence in the Ripple and XRP ecosystem, despite ongoing market volatility.

Major global investors and institutions continue to position for Ripple’s anticipated role in the future digital asset landscape, as reflected by recent capital flows and corporate strategies.

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.

A fraudulent social media campaign targeting the XRP community has surfaced, involving fake announcements that attempt to lure users into handing over their digital assets. Hussein Zangana, director of community at the XRP Ledger Foundation, warned users about the scam in a recent post.

Phishing scam impersonates RippleA popular XRP-focused X account, BankXRP, called attention to a deceptive post claiming Ripple would launch “XRP Holder Tiers.” The message, presented through an impersonation of the official Ripple X account, encouraged users to visit a fake website to claim exclusive XRP badges.

Scammers stated that these tiers would unlock special benefits for holders. By driving traffic to the fraudulent link, they aimed to trick users into connecting their wallets or entering sensitive information, such as seed phrases, which would allow attackers to steal their XRP tokens.

BankXRP emphasized that the real Ripple organization did not issue the announcement, and stressed that neither Ripple nor the XRP Ledger prompts holders to claim badges or register for perks. Security advocates advised the community to avoid interacting with suspicious links, and to be wary of any requirement to share wallet credentials.

XRP leaders: Stay vigilant amid sophisticated scamsHussein Zangana confirmed that the circulating announcement was entirely fraudulent and urged the XRP community to remain alert for similar attempts.

Community leaders pointed to a rising trend of attackers impersonating leading blockchain projects, imitating official messaging, and promoting malicious sites or tokens to deceive users and compromise their funds.

Wietse Wind, a prominent developer in the XRPL ecosystem, separately warned users that there is no “Xaman token,” highlighting an emerging pattern of fake token announcements designed to mislead investors.

Firelight and Flare Network targeted by impersonatorsThe operators of Firelight, an XRP-based liquid staking protocol running on the Flare Network, issued their own alert. In an official statement, Firelight cautioned users to interact only with its verified X account, Discord server, and website, as several fake accounts had begun impersonating the project. The team urged people to ignore these false profiles and to avoid providing any information or assets to fraudulent sources.

The incident highlights the challenges digital asset holders face in monitoring for scams, especially as cybercriminals persistently develop new methods to exploit unsuspecting users. As the ecosystem evolves, platforms like 1stepSwap are emerging to address transparency and security concerns. Through its innovative structure, 1stepSwap makes it possible to access real-world assets such as major US company shares and commodities directly on the blockchain using a personal wallet, streamlining portfolio diversification and ensuring users always receive the best prices available, while eliminating unnecessary intermediaries.

Law enforcement interventionResponding to the surge in crypto-related scams, authorities in Seoul arrested three people this week accused of operating a fraudulent XRP staking platform. Investigators reported that the group impersonated Flare Network and FXRP projects, tricking 71 victims into transferring approximately 3.4 million XRP. The suspected scammers ultimately amassed digital assets worth 27.3 billion won, equal to about $19 million, in their wallets.

Officials noted an increase in criminal tactics such as launching fake staking opportunities or issuing counterfeit utility tokens, underscoring the importance of verifying every detail before engaging with any blockchain project.

The series of incidents underscores the persistent risk facing holders of XRP and other digital assets, who are advised to maintain vigilance and ensure they interact solely with trusted sources for all transactions and project updates.

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

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

Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz hints he remains involved with XRP in a recent X conversation, despite stepping away from day-to-day duties at Ripple.

Schwartz revealed in late September 2025 that he will step down from his day-to-day activities as Ripple CTO at the end of the year. Ahead of the announcement, he spun up his own XRP Ledger node to publish its output data while researching other use cases for XRP.

Now, the Ripple CTO emeritus's recent comments hint that his retirement does not imply abandoning XRP. Schwartz responded to an X user who pointed to his recent observation about the XRP Ledger network, derived from his hub, to suggest that he didn't retire from XRP.

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"If you had any doubt about whether David was retiring from just Ripple or also from XRP," the X user wrote. Schwartz replied, saying, "It was fun spending a few hours working like I used to and having a Zoom call with the team again."

It was fun spending a few hours working like I used to and having a Zoom call with the team again.

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) July 31, 2026 Being an original architect of the XRP Ledger, Schwartz's comments have reassured many XRP supporters who questioned whether his retirement marked a complete departure from the XRP ecosystem.

Ripple CTO emeritus observation leads to XRPL fixOn Friday, Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz indicated that his hub was experiencing difficulties. The issue caused the hub to lose peers with "onReadMessage: No message of desired type" during negotiation, followed by a connection loss.

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The same issue was confirmed by XRPL Analytics App, xrpl.to, which stated that the problem was network-wide.

Schwartz's contribution to solving the issue may be inferred from his mention of having a Zoom call with the team and working for a couple of hours, which one might assume occurred in this context.

XRP Ledger version 3.2.1 was released shortly after, fixing the manifest flood observed on Friday, July 31. Nodes had previously accepted, stored, and rebroadcast an unlimited number of manifests from unknown validator keys; version 3.2.1 adds four limits to fix the issue.

Aug 1, 2026, 6:09 a.m.

2 min read

XRP Ledger upgrade brings back features once pulled over critical bugs. (Kevin Ku/Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk)Summary

The XRP Ledger’s upcoming xrpld 3.3.0 release will ask validators to approve five amendments, including revised versions of previously flawed Batch and Permission Delegation features.Batch would allow up to eight cross-account transactions to execute atomically, while Permission Delegation would let institutions grant narrowly scoped signing authority without exposing full control.New amendments—Confidential MPT, Sponsored Fees and Reserves, and Dynamic MPT—aim to enable private tokenized-asset activity, let institutions sponsor users’ XRP costs, and make certain token properties adjustable without full migrations, all still requiring 80% validator approval for two weeks.The XRP Ledger's next software release will put five new features in front of validators, two of which were pulled from the network after security researchers found flaws serious enough to warrant emergency action.

Jazzi Cooper, head of product at RippleX, said Friday that xrpld 3.3.0 is expected next week carrying Confidential MPT, Batch, Permission Delegation, Sponsored Fees and Reserves, and Dynamic MPT.

XRPL has already proven it can support tokenized assets at scale. Now it’s time to put these assets to use: global transfers, trading, collateralizing, and settling.

The upcoming release of xrpld 3.3.0 includes five amendments that move XRPL significantly closer to that goal.…

— Jazzi Cooper (@jazzicoop) July 31, 2026 Amendments are proposed protocol changes that only take effect once at least 80% of trusted validators back them for two consecutive weeks, a threshold designed so the network rather than Ripple decides what ships.

The Batch and Permission Delegation amendments have been through that process before and failed it.

Batch, which lets up to eight transactions across different accounts execute together so that either all succeed or none do, reached its voting phase in February.

Security researcher Pranamya Keshkamat and the firm Cantina had then found a flaw in how the amendment validated signatures that would have let an attacker execute transactions from any account without holding its keys.

Validators (entities that supply their resources to run and maintain a network) were advised to reject it, and an emergency server release marked it unsupported to prevent activation. No funds were lost, because it never reached the main network.

Permission Delegation, which lets an institution grant another account narrowly scoped authority without handing over full signing power, was disclosed as vulnerable in September 2025 and disabled.

The bug allowed one account to charge transaction fees to another and potentially drain its balance. The ledger's documentation has listed both amendments as obsolete since, to be replaced by revised versions.

(Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)The other three are new. Confidential MPT combines zero-knowledge proofs, which let someone prove a statement is true without revealing the underlying data, with elliptic-curve encryption, so that balances and transfer amounts on Multi-Purpose

Tokens stay private while auditors or regulators can still verify them when required.

Sponsored Fees and Reserves lets a bank or platform cover another account's XRP fees and reserve requirement, removing the need for every user to acquire XRP before transacting.

Lastly, Dynamic MPT lets an issuer specify at creation which token properties can be changed later, avoiding a full migration to a new token when fees or metadata need updating.

The release marks a shift from where the ledger stood two weeks ago. In mid-July, all five sat in development on the XRP Ledger's amendment tracker, and what validators could actually vote on was a set of bug-fix bundles covering the lending protocol, single-asset vaults, the permissioned exchange and multi-purpose tokens.

Approval is not automatic. The lending protocol and single-asset vault amendments have each drawn roughly a third of validator support against the 80% they need, and Batch already has a record of being voted down.

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The Evolution of the Crypto CEX Landscape: A Case Study on Binance

The Evolution of the Crypto CEX Landscape: A Case Study on Binance

Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.

Jun 29, 2026

Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.

Why it matters:

Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.

Altcoins

1 August 2026 | 09:43 XRP held near $1.06 on August 1, with price still confined between $1.05 support and resistance near $1.11 as Binance open interest fell to a 15-month low.

Key Takeaways Binance open interest fell to approximately $186 million, its lowest since April 2025. The lighter derivatives market reduces liquidation risk but provides little indication of direction. The expected xrpld 3.3.0 release includes five amendments that will still require validator approval. XRP trades near $1.06 after breaking below its rising triangle and finding support around $1.05.

Our July 28 analysis identified $1.05 as the next important test after price lost the triangle’s lower boundary. Buyers defended the level, but the rebound stopped below both the broken trendline and the 50-day simple moving average.

Price has remained in that narrow area since then, without retesting $1.05 or making a serious attempt to recover $1.11.

Daily technical price chart showing XRP moving sideways. Open Interest Has Reset While Price Stalls According to a CryptoQuant analysis, open interest in Binance’s stablecoin-margined XRP contracts fell to approximately $186 million on July 31, its lowest level since April 2025.

Bybit held roughly $229 million, while OKX accounted for another $49 million. Binance and Bybit represented nearly 89% of the combined open interest across the three exchanges.

CryptoQuant chart tracking XRP multi-exchange open interest across multiple derivatives platforms. Open interest measures the value of futures positions that remain active. The current reading shows that less leveraged capital is committed to XRP than during the major expansion phases of 2025.

With fewer positions in the market, XRP is less exposed to a large chain of forced liquidations. There is also less speculative pressure capable of quickly driving price beyond either side of the current range.

The data does not reveal whether the next expansion will favor buyers or sellers. Funding rates, volume, liquidations and spot demand are still needed to determine which side is becoming more active.

xrpld 3.3.0 Brings Five Amendments Back Into Focus The XRP Ledger community is also watching the expected release of xrpld 3.3.0.

The release is expected to introduce five proposed amendments for validator consideration:

Confidential MPT: Private balances and transfers for Multi-Purpose Tokens. Batch: Multiple transactions processed together as one operation. Permission Delegation: Controlled account permissions assigned to another address. Sponsored Fees and Reserves: Third parties covering users’ ledger costs. Dynamic MPT: Selected token properties that issuers can modify. Batch and Permission Delegation are revised versions of amendments withdrawn after earlier security reviews.

The original Batch amendment contained a signature-validation flaw that could have allowed unauthorized transactions. Permission Delegation was withdrawn after researchers found that an improperly signed transaction could charge fees to another account.

Neither flaw reached the live network. Their return in revised form reflects additional security work rather than the introduction of five entirely new features.

Jazzi Cooper, head of product at RippleX, posted on X that the amendments are intended to expand how tokenized assets can be transferred, traded, used as collateral and settled on XRPL.

XRPL has already proven it can support tokenized assets at scale. Now it’s time to put these assets to use: global transfers, trading, collateralizing, and settling.

The upcoming release of xrpld 3.3.0 includes five amendments that move XRPL significantly closer to that goal.…

— Jazzi Cooper (@jazzicoop) July 31, 2026

The software release would not activate them immediately. Each amendment must receive support from more than 80% of trusted validators and maintain that threshold for two weeks.

The release may increase developer and community activity, but its effect on XRP will depend on whether that attention produces new market demand.

The Chart Still Comes Down to $1.05 and $1.11 Resistance sits near $1.11, where the 50-day SMA at approximately $1.105 meets the former lower boundary of the rising triangle.

A move into that area would recover some of the decline, but the July breakdown would remain relevant until XRP closes above both the moving average and the broken trendline.

Support remains near $1.05, which has held since July 2 and stopped the latest decline after XRP left the triangle. A daily close beneath it would expose the June 26 low near $1.01.

For now, XRP remains between those levels. Open interest shows limited derivatives participation, while the expected xrpld release provides a scheduled network event rather than a confirmed price catalyst.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Technical levels, open interest and protocol developments do not guarantee future price performance. Methodology: The analysis uses the XRP/USD daily Coinbase chart dated August 1, 2026, including the 50-day SMA and triangle structure; CryptoQuant stablecoin-margined open-interest data through July 31; the July 28 Coindoo analysis; and official XRP Ledger documentation and vulnerability disclosures. Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

The XRP Ledger quietly crossed a significant milestone in the first six months of 2026, adding 489,739 new accounts between January 1 and June 30. That pushed the network’s total account count from 7,913,554 to 8,403,293, and by July active accounts had climbed past 8.42 million.

What’s actually driving the growth Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, which runs natively on the XRP Ledger, saw its circulating supply on the network grow to approximately $873 million in the first half of the year. Every RLUSD transaction settles in XRP fees, meaning more stablecoin volume creates structural demand for XRP as a utility token.

According to Messari, XRPL transaction volume exceeded 35% growth quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026.

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XRP held on exchanges fell to a seven-year low of 2.748 billion tokens, a signal that holders are moving assets into self-custody or longer-term positions. Spot ETF inflows for XRP reached $1.5 billion on a cumulative basis.

The price divergence problem XRP traded near $1.07 in July 2026, down roughly 41% year-to-date. For a network posting its strongest first-half account growth in recent memory, that’s a notable disconnect.

When fewer tokens sit on exchanges, the available float for buyers shrinks. Given that $1.5 billion in cumulative ETF inflows has not yet translated into price recovery, either those inflows are being offset by other selling pressure, or the price has further room to reflect the demand.

RLUSD’s growth adds a structural element: a stablecoin with nearly $873 million in circulating supply on a single chain generates consistent, recurring transaction fee demand. As RLUSD scales further, the fee-burn mechanic means more XRP consumed per unit of economic activity on the ledger.

Context and what to watch The XRP Ledger has been operating since 2012. The 489,739 new accounts added in six months represents a meaningful acceleration in the context of a network that took years to reach its first million accounts.

Three dynamics are worth tracking: RLUSD’s supply trajectory as it approaches $1 billion in circulating supply; the continued decline in exchange-held XRP, which narrowed the available float to 2.748 billion tokens; and the relationship between the $1.5 billion in cumulative spot ETF inflows and a price that remains down 41% year-to-date.

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

$XRP holders are moving their tokens off centralized exchanges at the fastest clip in more than five years, with on-chain data pointing to a broad retreat from sell-side activity even as the price lingers just above the $1 mark.

Withdrawals Hit a Multi-Year Peak On July 31, the seven-day $XRP withdrawal transaction share on Binance surged to 55.6%, the highest level since February 2021, while the same metric across all centralized exchanges reached 54%, according to CryptoQuant data. Deposit transaction shares fell to matching five-year lows of 44.3% on Binance and 45.95% across the broader market.

At the same time, exchange inflows fell to their lowest level ever recorded. Crypto analyst Darkfost observed that average monthly $XRP inflows to exchanges now stand at around 3.6 million XRP, the lowest monthly inflow figure on record. Combined with the surge in withdrawals, the on-chain metrics point toward holders unwilling to sell in large numbers, a condition Darkfost described as seller exhaustion.

Leverage and Reserves Also Pulling Back XRP futures open interest on Binance has fallen to roughly 397 million XRP, its lowest level in over three months, as the token trades around $1.09. A decline in open interest alongside price weakness often reflects deleveraging, as traders reduce or close existing positions.

Binance $XRP reserves have dropped roughly 650 million coins, or about 20%, since November 2024, falling from 2.8 billion in May to around 2.6 billion more recently. Such withdrawals can signal investors moving tokens into self-custody, though they do not automatically translate into upward price pressure without corresponding demand from fresh buyers.

The broader picture suggests a market in consolidation rather than active distribution. Holders appear reluctant to bring coins to market, leveraged bets are being unwound, and exchange supply is thinning. Whether that sets the stage for a recovery or simply reflects a lack of conviction on all sides remains an open question.

Sources:
XRP exchange withdrawals hit 5-year high: Here's what it means, CryptoNews.net
XRP exchange withdrawals hit multi-year high as selling pressure fades, AMBCrypto
XRP Open Interest on Binance Hits a Three-Month Low, Yahoo Finance

Dr. Kamilah Stevenson, a blockchain strategist known as The Wealth Doctor, has put forward a six-part upgrade package for the XRP Ledger aimed at making the public network more attractive to banks and corporations. These proposed changes focus on facilitating confidential transfers and improving compliance features, with the goal of addressing key concerns institutions face when considering public blockchains.

Confidential transfers and compliance focusDr. Stevenson emphasized that financial institutions and corporations have hesitated to use public blockchain networks for sensitive transactions, primarily because transaction data—including balances, counterparties, and timing—are visible to anyone with access to the network. She argues that this visibility compromises privacy and confidentiality, both of which are non-negotiable requirements for many enterprises operating under regulatory oversight.

The confidential transfers feature included in her proposal would conceal transaction amounts from public view while still allowing the ledger to validate the legitimacy of each transfer and ensure no improper creation of assets occurs. This privacy mechanism, according to Dr. Stevenson, is critical for enterprise adoption.

“When technology reaches ordinary people, it disappears,” Dr. Stevenson said, pointing out that consumers could use products built on the upgraded XRP Ledger without having to buy XRP or be aware that blockchain technology underpins the application.

Mini dictionary: XRP Ledger, also known as XRPL, is an open-source, decentralized blockchain widely used for fast, low-cost cross-border payments.

Additional upgrade featuresBeyond confidential transfers, the proposed upgrade package addresses several operational and technical needs. Batch transactions would permit multiple actions to be executed together, succeeding or failing as a single unit, enabling greater efficiency for corporate workflows. Permission delegation is envisioned to allow limited account authority, granting specific permissions to associates or automated processes without sharing full private key access.

The integration of Dynamic NFTs, which are tokens with properties that can be updated after issuance, could attract new enterprise and consumer applications. Additionally, node-performance improvements could yield up to 40% reductions in memory use, potentially lowering infrastructure costs for network participants.

FeaturePurposeIntended UsersConfidential transfersPrivacy for transaction detailsBanks, enterprisesBatch transactionsMultiple actions in one stepInstitutional usersPermission delegationControlled account accessCorporate accountsDynamic NFTsModifiable token featuresDevelopers, enterprisesNode-performance upgradesMemory efficiencyNetwork validatorsGovernance and upgrade processUnder the XRP Ledger’s governance model, any amendment or upgrade requires continuous support from at least 80% of validators over a two-week period. If validator backing falls below this threshold at any point, the activation timer resets. Dr. Stevenson described this conservative protocol as specifically designed to give stability and predictability to institutions evaluating long-term infrastructure investments.

Any proposed features must navigate the amendment process before becoming active on the XRP Ledger, and no set date or validator numbers for this upgrade package have been disclosed.

Since the features remain in the proposal stage, there are as yet no market price movements or adoption figures directly attributed to the potential upgrade. Implementation would ultimately rely on community support, validator consensus, and the resolution of any technical or compliance questions that arise during the approval process.

If these upgrades are adopted, the XRP Ledger could expand its appeal to regulated firms, but actual integration would depend on further alignment with compliance requirements and demonstrated enterprise demand.

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 brief A fake staking site that ran for eight days last October took 3.4 million XRP from 71 investors, worth 12.3 billion won ($8.5 million), Seoul police said. Police say the operators impersonated Flare Network and FXRP, and seeded blogs, articles and YouTube with false information. Investigators traced 27.3 billion won ($18.8 million) through wallets linked to the group and froze 17.3 billion won of it. A fake staking site that ran for eight days last October took 3.4 million XRP from 71 investors, worth 12.3 billion won ($8.5 million), Seoul police say. Two men, both 29, have been referred to prosecutors on aggravated fraud charges, local outlet Chosun reported Thursday.

According to police, the site, Fxrpntwork.com, impersonated Flare Network and its FXRP token, both legitimate projects, and promised monthly returns of 1.5% to 1.8% with principal guaranteed. Investors were allegedly directed to move XRP off domestic exchanges, through overseas venues, and into wallets the group controlled, before the site shut down on October 23 and the operators disappeared.

A fake evidence basePolice said the group planted false information on portal blogs, online news articles and Wikipedia, and produced YouTube videos featuring a paid stand-in, so anyone researching the project found what looked like independent corroboration. The scheme followed FXRP's actual launch the month before.

The stand-in, 34, has been charged with fraud. Police put average losses at 173 million won ($119,000) a victim across the week the site was live.

Police froze 17.3 billion won of assets across overseas exchanges as soon as they detected the scheme. Another 10 billion won moved during the investigation and is unaccounted for, they said. Together that is the 27.3 billion won ($18.8 million) investigators traced through wallets linked to the group, well above the 12.3 billion won confirmed lost by the 71 known victims, which police say points to more.

An overseas exchange tipped off police last October about a surge in staking fraud. Investigators executed 54 search and seizure warrants, arrested one suspect at a hideout after he returned from abroad, and picked up the others in sequence. A fourth man, also 29, is overseas under an Interpol Red Notice. None of the four has been tried, and police have not made their identities public.

South Korean police have brought a run of crypto cases this year, including June's charges against 23 people over laundering $11.1 million in USDT for a Cambodia-based phishing ring. Investigators said they would treat crypto fraud with "zero tolerance," and urged investors to check official sources before sending funds.

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South Korean police have uncovered one of the country’s biggest XRP related crypto scams after arresting three suspects linked to a fake staking platform that promised fixed monthly returns. 

Authorities say the fraud pulled in about 3.4 million XRP from 71 victims, while blockchain tracking shows total wallet flows linked to the operation reached 27.3 billion won (around $19 million).

How the Fake XRP Staking Platform Tricked InvestorsAccording to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Cyber Investigation Unit, the suspects created a fake website called Fxrpntwork.com between Oct. 16 and Oct. 23, 2025, posing as the legitimate Flare Network and its FXRP ecosystem.

The platform promised investors guaranteed principal protection along with monthly staking returns of 1.5% to 1.8%. 

To make the scheme look real, the group flooded the internet with fake promotional content across Naver blogs, Tistory, Wikipedia pages, online news articles, and YouTube videos, some featuring paid actors pretending to review the platform.

Police said the fraudsters deliberately launched the website around the real FXRP token rollout to make their operation appear legitimate.

🚨SEOUL POLICE BUST $19M XRP STAKING SCAM!

Three arrested over a fake $XRP staking platform that impersonated Flare Network and FXRP around their launch.

71 victims lost about 3.4 million $XRP.

Roughly 27.3 billion won ($19 million) reached the operators’ wallets.

A fourth… pic.twitter.com/AJ825BmoZj

— Crypto Banter (@crypto_banter) July 30, 2026 Instead of sending XRP directly from domestic exchanges, victims were instructed to move their tokens through overseas exchanges before depositing them into wallets controlled by the scammers. This method helped avoid South Korea’s strict monitoring systems for large crypto transfers.

After collecting approximately 3.4 million XRP, the operators shut down the website and disappeared.

Police Freeze $12 Million, But Part of the Crypto Is Still MissingThe investigation began after an overseas cryptocurrency exchange reported suspicious XRP movements to South Korean authorities.

Using blockchain analysis, IP tracking, domain registration records, and conversation logs, investigators froze about 17.3 billion won ($12 million) in XRP and Tether across several overseas exchanges within three days of receiving the alert.

Authorities are now working through legal procedures to confiscate those assets and return them to victims.

However, police said roughly 10 billion won ($7 million) worth of crypto had already been moved before the freeze and remains missing.

One Suspect On the Run, Faces Interpol Red NoticePolice arrested three suspects, meanwhile, authorities obtained an arrest warrant for a fourth suspect, who is believed to be overseas, and have requested an Interpol Red Notice.

The two main suspects have been referred to prosecutors under South Korea’s Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, while investigators continue executing additional search warrants to identify others involved in promoting the scam and laundering the stolen crypto through OTC traders.

Story Ends Here

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Franklin Templeton’s spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) recorded a net inflow of $592,000 during the latest trading session, outpacing other XRP ETFs, which saw no new capital. This development drew attention from market observers and sparked discussion around institutional strategies in the digital asset space.

Institutional activity singles out Franklin TempletonCrypto market commentator Digital Asset Investor highlighted that Franklin Templeton clients were the only group to allocate fresh capital to a spot XRP ETF, citing data from BankXRP. Competing providers, including Bitwise, Canary, Grayscale, and 21Shares, reported zero inflows over the same period.

The commentator interpreted this selective buying as a sign of potential institutional confidence ahead of possible regulatory developments in the United States. In recent commentary, Digital Asset Investor questioned whether this accumulation pointed to firms positioning themselves ahead of anticipated market shifts.

Franklin Templeton, a global asset management leader, has consistently advocated for clearer digital asset regulation. The firm has previously voiced support for the proposed CLARITY Act, which aims to define regulatory oversight between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Franklin Templeton’s targeted inflow stands in stark contrast to its competitors and is viewed by market watchers as a potential indication of early institutional moves ahead of possible regulatory clarity.

Many institutional players have labeled regulatory ambiguity as a key obstacle to significant investment in the digital asset segment. Market watchers suggest that once there is a more certain legal landscape, institutions could commit larger capital reserves to assets such as XRP.

Potential supply squeeze as ETF demand continuesDigital Asset Investor also noted that accumulation by spot ETFs could lower the quantity of XRP available on exchanges. Spot ETFs typically hold the underlying asset in custody, removing it from the circulating supply. If demand from institutional investors increases—particularly after possible regulatory changes—this reduced liquid supply could intensify market movements.

U.S.-listed spot XRP ETFs have seen their total assets under management climb past $1 billion, reflecting growing interest even as net inflows remain modest on a day-to-day basis. Supporters view the ongoing accumulation as an indicator of steady, if gradual, institutional adoption.

This gradual micropattern of ETF inflows, while currently limited in size, is cited as a signal of the direction institutional involvement might take should regulatory certainty emerge to unlock additional allocations.

Some commentators predict that this pattern could accelerate with clarity around legal and regulatory guidelines. If such certainty triggers a surge in institutional investments, the combined effects of ETF accumulation and additional large-scale buying could quickly absorb remaining tokens on exchanges.

This development resonates with growing interest in platforms enabling direct asset access. For instance, 1stepSwap has gained attention for connecting real-world assets with blockchain markets, allowing investors to buy shares of leading U.S. stocks and commodities like gold and silver through their crypto wallets. Its core feature is the ability to identify and secure the best market price in real time, supporting diversification while eliminating unnecessary intermediaries.

While the $592,000 inflow is comparatively small relative to Franklin Templeton’s overall asset base, it underscores the selective and strategic approach institutions may take if regulatory reforms change the investment environment for XRP and similar tokens.

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.

Grayscale, the crypto asset manager overseeing more than $35 billion in assets under management (AUM), has disclosed that CEO Peter Mintzberg plans to sell 2,611 shares of the company’s XRP ETF.

The filing comes as XRP trades near $1.09, raising questions about investor demand and the ETF’s weaker position in the market.

Grayscale CEO Peter Mintzberg filed a Form 144 notice with the SEC to sell 2,611 shares of the Grayscale XRP Trust ETF, trading under the ticker GXRP. Based on the filing value of about $53,395, the shares are worth roughly $20.45 each.

Mintzberg acquired the shares on Oct. 3, 2024, through a private purchase from the trust, well before GXRP became a listed spot XRP ETF.

The proposed sale would be handled on NYSE Arca through Cantor Fitzgerald. 

Meanwhile, Mintzberg is also not the first Grayscale insider to reduce exposure to GXRP. Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert and Grayscale Chief Legal Officer Craig Salm filed notices to sell their pre-listing GXRP shares in January 2026, when the ETF was trading near $37.

While Mintzberg’s proposed sale is small, the wider movement in GXRP shares is more important for investors.

Regulatory filings from January showed GXRP had approximately 5.79 million shares outstanding. However, more recent filings indicate that figure has declined significantly. 

Since ETF share redemptions typically require the fund to sell its underlying XRP holdings and reduce the number of outstanding shares, the drop may reflect weakening investor demand.

At the same time, GXRP is facing growing competition from newly launched U.S. spot XRP ETFs. While the broader XRP ETF market has grown to more than $971 million in net assets, Grayscale now holds only about 6% of the market, according to the Soso value data. 

Even so, investor interest in XRP remains strong overall, with cumulative inflows across U.S. XRP ETFs surpassing $1.5 billion.

XRP Price Faces Key $1.12 ResistanceDespite the filing news, XRP price continues to rise 2.57% in 24 hours to around $1.09.

However, the technical picture remains cautious. XRP is trading below its 30-day and 200-day moving averages, while RSI sits near 40 and MACD is close to a bearish crossover.

A daily close above $1.12 could strengthen the recovery and put $1.50 back in focus. If XRP fails to break higher, continued ETF redemptions and weaker momentum could keep the token under pressure.

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U.K. asset manager Aviva Investors has announced the launch of its first tokenized fund in partnership with crypto firm Ripple. This follows the partnership that both firms struck earlier this year to advance tokenization on the XRP Ledger (XRPL)

Aviva Investors Tokenizes USD Fund On XRP Ledger In a press release, the asset manager announced the successful launch of a tokenized share class of its USD Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger. “This marks the first tokenisation of an Aviva Investors fund, and follows the announcement of the partnership between the firm and Ripple early in the year,” the release read.

As CoinGape reported, Ripple partnered with Aviva Investors earlier this year to advance tokenization on the XRP Ledger. This is notably Ripple’s first partnership with a European investment firm to tokenize real-world assets (RWA) at scale.

Aviva Investors revealed that crypto custodian Komainu and digital platform company Licuido both supported the launch of the tokenized share class. Meanwhile, the asset manager also received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) for the launch of this tokenized fund.

Coincidentally, the launch of this tokenized fund comes as the Ripple-backed XRP Ledger fix amendment goes live. The network’s developers have continued to push upgrades in a bid to boost the network’s institutional adoption.

How The Fund Works Aviva Investors noted that the fund targets low-risk returns and daily liquidity by offering investors exposure to high-grade US dollar-denominated short-term debt instruments. The asset manager further mentioned that the new share class will be available to eligible investors with digital wallets.

Meanwhile, BNY Mellon, the fund’s custodian, will be responsible for holding the assets for these tokenized shares. “The structure has been designed to operate within existing regulatory frameworks, providing a scalable foundation for future innovation in fund distribution and market infrastructure,” the asset manager added.

The XRP Ledger continues to see increased activity in terms of tokenization. RWA.xyz data shows that the total tokenized value on the network currently stands at just over $4.3 billion. The RWA holders on the network are notably up over 17% in the last month.

For more on tokenization, please check out our page on Best Platforms to Trade Tokenized Stocks

In brief XRP is trading at $1.06, off nearly 8% over the past week. The movement happens as the U.S. Senate shelved the Clarity Act before its August recess and global markets braced for the Fed's July 29 rate decision. XRP's technicals are almost uniformly bearish: a confirmed death cross, RSI at 40.9, negative Squeeze momentum, and a composite score of -63%—the only technical lifeline is that it is deeply oversold. The global macro backdrop is as unfavorable as it's been all year for crypto markets.

New Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, in only his second FOMC meeting, is widely expected to hold rates at 3.50%–3.75%, but CME FedWatch put hike odds near 38% as recently as last weekend—the highest of this cycle. Even a hawkish hold can rattle risk assets. Bitcoin is parked near $63,400–$64,000, well below its June highs around $80,000, and altcoins are taking the brunt.

XRP, the cryptocurrency developed by the founders of payments company Ripple, had a moment of optimism this month that now feels like a distant memory. As Decrypt reported on July 21, the coin cautiously jumped 3.25% to $1.1485 when reports broke that President Donald Trump had agreed to the Clarity Act's long-stalled ethics provision, briefly nudging Senate passage odds on Polymarket to 43%. That lasted about a week.

On Monday, the Senate formally shelved the Clarity Act to prioritize a Russia sanctions bill and federal nominations. The chamber's August recess begins around August 7—which means there is a thin frame for the bill to be approved this year. Miss that window, and the next opportunity might not come until 2027.

For XRP, the stakes are concrete: The Clarity Act would codify its commodity classification into law, the legal bedrock that institutional custodians, banks, and ETF issuers need to feel comfortable building products around it. Standard Chartered's conditional $8 XRP target—contingent on full Senate passage plus $4 billion to $8 billion in new ETF inflows—stays theoretical without it.

So things are not looking great for Clarity, or XRP.

XRP price: What the charts sayXRP is trading at $1.0641 and a roughly $65 billion market cap on Binance, with a 24-hour low of $1.0450 and a high of $1.0679. The token peaked near $3.40 in mid-2025 and has been in a sustained descending channel ever since, logging lower highs and lower lows for months.

XRP price data. Image: TradingviewThe Average Directional Index, or ADX, sits at 11.2—one of the weakest readings XRP has posted all summer. The ADX measures trend strength on a 0–100 scale, regardless of whether that trend is up or down. Think of it as measuring how much conviction the market has: anything below 25 signals no confirmed trend is in place, and sub-20 readings are associated with choppy, directionless markets where false breakouts and stop hunts are common.

As Decrypt flagged on July 16, when the reading was 13.3, XRP has been stuck in exactly this trendless limbo for most of July. One mildly constructive signal: the directional indicator is starting to rotate from DI- (bearish dominance) toward DI+ (bullish pressure building). So there’s hopium somewhere in there.

The Exponential Moving Averages, or EMAs—which smooth out price action over time to reveal trend direction—confirm the big picture: the 50-day EMA is trading below the 200-day EMA in the formation traders call a death cross. When the shorter average sits below the longer one, it means the medium-term trajectory is still pointed downward, regardless of short-term bounces. This alignment has been in place since XRP's slide from the $3.65 all-time high, and there is no sign yet of the two averages starting to converge.

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, reads 40.9. RSI is a momentum gauge on a 0–100 scale: above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold. At 40.9, XRP is in bearish territory—below the neutral 50 line—but not yet at the extreme levels that typically attract aggressive buyers looking for a floor.

On the Fibonacci side (natural supports and resistances that appear during a trend) the current bearish leg runs from $1.1646 down to $1.0450. Below that price, the next Fib support is $1.0125, followed by $0.9711.

What happens nextTwo events will define XRP's next directional move. If Fed Chair Warsh holds and signals a dovish tone—or hints at September cuts—crypto gets a relief pop, and XRP could test the Fibonacci golden zone between $1.10 and $1.12. If the statement reads hawkish or a dissenting vote appears, the sell-off has room to extend toward $1.01 and, below that, the $0.97 zone.

The Clarity Act is the bigger, longer-term variable. The Senate's August recess starts August 7. If a floor vote doesn't materialize before then, XRP's primary institutional catalyst evaporates until at least late 2026—and possibly well beyond, given the midterm election calendar that follows.

The technical setup argues for patience rather than urgency. A market this trendless—ADX at 11.2, Squeeze loaded with negative momentum, death cross intact—can compress for longer than most traders expect before resolving. The oversold indicators could produce a short-term bounce toward but without a macro catalyst or a legislative surprise, that bounce is more likely a selling opportunity than the start of a new trend.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

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The update makes DeFi access easier by reducing the approval process to a single wallet signature.

Flare has introduced Smart Accounts version 1.3 to simplify how XRP holders access decentralized finance (DeFi) without changing their existing wallet. The update also removes the need to create separate wallets, manually bridge assets, or manage gas tokens before using DeFi services.

According to a press release sent to CryptoPotato, users now need only a single wallet signature to access DeFi. Previously, the process required two separate approvals.

How Smart Accounts Version 1.3 Works Under the new version, users approve a single transaction from their XRP Ledger wallet. The system then converts their XRP into FXRP and automatically deposits it into a selected yield vault.

The Flare Data Connector verifies the XRP Ledger transaction before a smart contract completes the remaining steps. Flare said the original XRP remains locked on the XRP Ledger at a one-to-one ratio throughout the process.

This setup allows users to retain control of their assets while removing the need for manual bridging or obtaining gas tokens on another blockchain. The simplified process comes as FXRP activity across decentralized finance platforms continues to expand.

Since February, the amount of FXRP deployed across DeFi applications has grown by nearly 75%, rising from 82 million to 144 million. Flare also reported that more than 40 million XRP is currently earning through Smart Accounts across nearly 24,000 accounts.

New Vaults and Broader Wallet Integration Commenting on the update, Chief Product Officer Filip Koprivec said millions of XRP holders had wanted access to DeFi, but the experience had been too complex. He said version 1.3 lets users move from XRP to yield with a single wallet signature while remaining fully non-custodial.

You may also like: Ripple (XRP) News and Price Update: July 27 Ripple (XRP) ETF Inflows Set Another Record, but One Problem Remains Do People Interested in XRP Actually Care About Ripple? The version also expands the available yield options with two vaults offering different approaches. Users can continue using the Monarq vault or choose the new Clearstar Flare XRP Yield Vault, which uses on-chain lending and liquidity strategies.

According to the company, the Clearstar vault distributes FXRP across protocols including Avant and Euler while keeping all positions publicly visible. Flare added that Clearstar has previously managed more than 33 million FXRP through earlier deployments.

The update also expands wallet support to Ledger, Xaman, Joey Wallet, WalletConnect, including Bifrost, and D’CENT. Joey Wallet has integrated the Smart Accounts interface directly into its application, allowing users to complete the process without leaving the wallet.

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In 2023 a group of developers forked the XRP Ledger because its validators would not adopt smart contracts. Three years later the parent chain is shipping its own programmability layer, and the drafted specification names the fork’s technology as an inspiration. Here is what actually happened, what it means for XAH, and why three competing architectures now answer the same question.

Summary

Xahau launched in 2023 as a fork of the XRP Ledger’s rippled codebase, carrying the Hooks amendment that XRPL validators never adopted, with its own token, its own validator set, and a governance system run through a genesis account hook. The XRP Ledger is now building programmability natively: XLS-100d Smart Escrows, using WebAssembly, sits among known amendments with a devnet live, and XLS-101 Smart Contracts is a drafted specification that cites both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine as influences. Xahau rejects the sidechain framing entirely, positioning itself as an independent Layer 1 that diverged in its own direction, with features the parent lacks and vice versa, and describing the borrowing as mutual. Three architectures now answer the same question for one ecosystem: Hooks on Xahau, Solidity through the EVM sidechain whose first year this publication audited at $25,741 in total value locked, and WebAssembly natively on the main ledger. The open question is what a fork is worth once the chain it left ships the capability it forked for, and XAH is the asset where that question gets priced. Forks in crypto usually happen over money or ideology. This one happened over a feature. In 2023, after years in which the XRP Ledger’s validators declined to adopt Hooks, a lightweight smart-contract system that would let small pieces of code live on accounts and govern the transactions those accounts send and receive, the developers behind it stopped waiting. They took the ledger’s open-source rippled codebase, added Hooks, launched a network called Xahau with its own token and its own validators, and shipped the capability the parent chain would not. Ripple’s chief technology officer publicly supported the move at the time, saying he could not think of a better path forward for the technology. Three years later the parent chain is building programmability after all. XLS-100d, a WebAssembly-based Smart Escrows amendment, is among the known amendments with a devnet running, and XLS-101d, a drafted specification for general smart contracts, explicitly names both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine among its influences. This piece examines what that convergence actually means: for the ledger that spent years refusing, for the fork that stopped waiting, and for an ecosystem that now has three separate answers to the question of how a payments chain becomes programmable.

JUST IN: Ripple joins Squid’s $6m strategic round. Squid, powered by Axelar, routes liquidity across 100+ chains with $6B+ cross-chain volume and XRPL integration pic.twitter.com/95RBM2OkKY

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) May 24, 2026 Understanding the fork requires understanding what it kept, because Xahau is not a departure from the XRP Ledger’s design so much as an addition to it.

The network preserved the core: the consensus protocol, the native decentralized exchange, and the fee-and-reserve logic that protects the ledger against spam by charging and burning fees in the native token. What it added was Hooks, small pieces of code installed on an account that impose rules on transactions before those transactions execute, enabling functions such as time locks on transfers, social-recovery arrangements for accounts, and self-custodial direct debits. The design philosophy is deliberately narrow. Hooks were never intended to replicate a general-purpose virtual machine; they are lightweight logic reacting to ledger events, executing fast enough to preserve settlement speed and cheap enough to suit a payments chain.

Two further design choices distinguish it. Xahau substituted a simpler token standard for the parent’s NFT implementation, and it built a governance system in which the genesis account itself is controlled by a hook that regulates matters including the emission of new XAH, administered through a two-tiered arrangement with up to twenty independently owned validators as participants. Governance by smart contract, on a chain whose reason for existing is smart contracts, is at least internally consistent. XAH functions as the network’s fee and reserve asset, with a balance-rewards mechanism that has no equivalent on the parent chain.

The launch was contentious in the way ecosystem splits usually are, with parts of the XRP community expressing unease at the lack of official involvement, and with the fork’s supporters arguing that validators refusing an amendment for years had left no alternative. The relevant point for today is that Xahau shipped and kept shipping, accumulating a validator set, an exchange listing history, and a working developer story around a capability the main ledger did not have.

What the parent is shipping now The XRP Ledger’s current roadmap describes a different route to the same destination, and the specifications are public.

XLS-100d, Smart Escrows, brings WebAssembly-based conditional logic to escrow objects, allowing programmable conditions to govern the release of funds, and it appears among the ledger’s known amendments with a dedicated devnet for developers to test against.

That is a narrow, payments-native form of programmability: not a general computing environment, but escrows that can enforce arbitrary conditions written in a widely supported bytecode format. XLS-101d, Smart Contracts, is the broader specification, drafted in 2025, proposing general smart contract capability on the ledger and citing both Hooks and the EVM among the designs it draws from.

The choice of WebAssembly instead of a bespoke virtual machine is the interesting technical decision, because it imports an existing toolchain and developer base rather than asking builders to learn something proprietary. It is also, in its way, an admission: the ledger that resisted programmability for years is now adopting a mainstream execution standard, and doing so with public acknowledgment of the technology that forked away over exactly this question.

The timing places three approaches in the same ecosystem simultaneously. Hooks run on Xahau. Solidity runs on the XRPL EVM sidechain, whose first year this publication audited and found holding $25,741 in total value locked, a figure that remains the sharpest available evidence that architectural compatibility does not produce developer gravity by itself. And WebAssembly is arriving natively on the main ledger. Three answers, one ecosystem, and no consolidation in sight.

The fork refuses the frame The narrative that writes itself, that a parent chain has absorbed the innovation its fork proved out, is one Xahau explicitly rejects, and its objection deserves fair treatment because it complicates the story usefully.

The current positioning from the Xahau side is that it is not a sidechain and never was one in any meaningful operational sense: it is an independent Layer 1, built from a fork of the XRPL codebase, that has evolved in a completely different direction with its own validators, its own governance, and its own economics. On this account the two networks occasionally adopt ideas from one another and otherwise develop separately, with features existing on each that do not exist on the other. The sidechain confusion, the argument goes, comes from early marketing history and not from present reality.

That framing is defensible on the technical facts and self-interested at the same time, which is normal for any project describing itself. Independence is real: separate consensus, separate validator set, separate token with its own monetary policy. Mutual borrowing is also real, since specifications flow in both directions among developers who largely know each other. But the asymmetry is equally real and no framing dissolves it. When the parent ledger ships general programmability, a developer choosing where to build weighs Xahau’s head start and Hooks’ elegance against the main ledger’s liquidity, its institutional relationships, its exchange support, and the ecosystem’s marketing gravity. Forks that exist to supply a missing capability face their hardest test at exactly the moment the capability stops being missing, and no amount of correct positioning about independence changes the competitive arithmetic a builder actually runs.

The threshold that decides everything Everything in this piece depends on a governance mechanic that outsiders consistently underestimate, and the ledger’s own recent history supplies the cautionary case.

XRP Ledger amendments activate only when validators on the default list signal support at or above eighty percent, and that support must hold continuously for two weeks before the change takes effect. Fall below the line at any point in the window and the clock resets. There is no foundation that can force adoption, no core team veto, and no timetable: an amendment can sit in the known-amendments list indefinitely, gathering partial support, activating never. Hooks itself is the proof. The specification existed, the implementation worked, the technology was sound enough that the ledger’s own chief technology officer publicly endorsed the fork that shipped it, and the amendment still never reached the threshold on the main chain. Years of availability produced no activation, which is precisely why Xahau exists at all.

That history should discipline every forecast about XLS-100d and XLS-101d. A specification in the known-amendments list is a proposal that validators may or may not adopt, and a drafted specification like the general smart contracts proposal is a step earlier still. Both could activate this year; both could sit for three years; either outcome would be consistent with the ledger’s record. The ecosystem’s more recent experience cuts the same way in the opposite direction, since a maintenance amendment this summer sat near forty-eight percent support for a month before validators moved and carried it past the threshold at eighty-six percent, showing that stalled votes can turn quickly once the coalition assembles. Prediction is unwise in both directions.

The threshold also shapes the competitive dynamic between the two chains in a way neither side usually discusses. Xahau’s governance runs through a hook on its genesis account under a two-tier arrangement with up to twenty validators, which is a materially different mechanism from the parent’s eighty percent supermajority, and the fork’s ability to ship features it decides to ship is not a small advantage for a network whose entire premise is programmability. A chain that can adopt is structurally different from a chain that must persuade. Whether that speed advantage matters more than the parent’s liquidity is the actual competition, and it is a question about governance architecture more than about virtual machines.

For a reader tracking this, the practical instruction is simple: ignore roadmap announcements and watch the validator vote count, published continuously, on the specific amendments. Announcements are intentions. The count is the only thing that has ever decided what the XRP Ledger does.

What it means for XAH The honest assessment splits into a bear case and a bull case that are both stronger than the ecosystem’s usual discourse allows.

The bear case is straightforward. XAH’s investment thesis has substantially been that Xahau is where XRPL-ecosystem smart contracts live. If XLS-100d and XLS-101d ship and function, that thesis erodes toward a narrower claim: Xahau is where a particular style of lightweight account-attached logic lives, competing against native WebAssembly contracts on a chain with vastly more liquidity, more integrations, and more attention. Fee-burn value accrual on a chain whose activity moves elsewhere is the same problem this publication has documented across the value-accrual arc, arriving in a smaller ecosystem with less cushion.

The bull case rests on three points that deserve their weight. First, shipping schedules: XLS-101d is a draft, amendments require validator adoption at an eighty percent threshold sustained over two weeks, and the ledger’s own history, including the years Hooks spent unadopted, is the strongest available evidence that XRPL amendments can stall indefinitely. Xahau’s capability exists today; the parent’s is a specification and a devnet. Second, design divergence: Hooks and WebAssembly contracts are not substitutes for every purpose, and lightweight event-triggered logic on accounts has properties a general contract environment does not. Third, and most underrated, the governance experiment: a chain whose emission and genesis account are administered by a hook under a two-tier validator arrangement is running a live test of on-chain governance that the parent has not attempted, and if that works at scale it is an independent reason for the network to exist.

The verdict this piece can honestly offer is narrower than either case: the fork’s premise has changed, and the market has not repriced it because the parent’s capability is not live yet. When XLS-100d activates, the question stops being theoretical, and XAH becomes the cleanest available measure of what a fork is worth after the reason for forking has been addressed at home.

What to watch XLS-100d’s amendment vote. Smart Escrows crossing the eighty percent validator threshold and completing its two-week activation window is the event that converts this from a roadmap story into a live competitive fact. Watch the vote count, not the announcements.

XLS-101d’s progression. A drafted specification is a long way from an activated amendment. Whether the general smart-contract proposal moves toward candidate status within the year, or joins the long list of XRPL specifications that never reached a vote, determines the scale of the challenge to Xahau.

Developer migration signals. New deployments, tooling investment, and grant activity across the three environments are the leading indicators. The EVM sidechain’s first-year experience is the cautionary baseline: compatibility alone moved nothing.

Xahau’s differentiation response. The fork’s strongest move is to lean into what the parent will not copy, meaning its governance model, its balance rewards, and Hooks’ specific ergonomics. Whether the project pivots toward those or defends the general smart-contract ground is the strategic tell worth watching.

A closing observation about what this episode says about the ecosystem’s decision-making, since the technical story has a governance moral. The XRP Ledger’s amendment threshold is a genuine decentralization feature, the same property this publication has praised when validators declined to follow Ripple’s own signaling on other proposals, and it is also the reason a capability the ecosystem clearly wanted took six years and a fork to arrive. Both statements are true, and the tension between them is the permanent condition of any network that makes protocol change hard on purpose. Chains that can ship quickly capture opportunities and make mistakes quickly; chains that require supermajorities avoid mistakes and miss windows. Neither is a flaw to be fixed.

What the Xahau episode adds is the observation that in an open-source ecosystem, the slow chain does not actually prevent the feature from existing. It only determines where the feature lives, who benefits from it, and which token captures whatever value it generates. The developers who wanted Hooks did not wait; they left, built, and launched, and the parent chain’s caution cost it three years of programmability and handed a competitor its founding purpose. Now the parent is building the capability anyway, on its own timeline, with the fork’s work as a reference. That is either the system working exactly as designed, with experimentation happening safely outside the main ledger before the ideas mature into it, or an expensive way to arrive at a destination the ecosystem could have reached directly. Both readings have adherents, and the amendment vote will not settle which is right.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Protocol specifications, amendment statuses, and roadmaps change, and drafted proposals may never activate. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 27, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions What is Xahau? An independent Layer 1 blockchain launched in 2023 as a fork of the XRP Ledger’s open-source rippled codebase, created to implement Hooks, a lightweight smart contract system that XRPL validators had not adopted. It retains the parent’s consensus protocol, decentralized exchange, and fee-burning design while adding programmability, its own token XAH, its own validator set, and a governance system administered through a hook on the genesis account.

What are Hooks? Small pieces of code installed on an account that impose rules on transactions the account sends or receives, executing before those transactions complete. They enable functions such as transaction time locks, social-recovery arrangements, and self-custodial direct debits. Hooks were designed for speed and low cost rather than to replicate a general-purpose virtual machine, which is the core design difference from EVM-style smart contracts.

What is the XRP Ledger building now? Two things. XLS-100d, Smart Escrows, uses WebAssembly to allow programmable conditions on escrow releases and appears among known amendments with a devnet available. XLS-101d, Smart Contracts, is a drafted specification for general smart contract capability that cites both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine among its influences. Neither is yet activated on the main ledger.

Is XRPL copying Xahau? Borrowing openly, in one direction, while the fork maintains that exchange runs both ways. The drafted XRPL specification names Hooks as an influence, which is a public acknowledgment. Xahau’s position is that it is an independent chain that has evolved in its own direction, with features on each network absent from the other, and that both occasionally adopt ideas from the other.

How many ways can you write smart contracts in the XRP ecosystem? Three, currently. Hooks on Xahau, Solidity via the XRPL EVM sidechain, and WebAssembly natively on the main ledger once the relevant amendments activate. The EVM sidechain’s first year, which this publication audited at $25,741 in total value locked, is the ecosystem’s own evidence that offering an execution environment does not by itself attract developers.

What does this mean for the XAH token? It puts pressure on the fork’s core premise. If the parent ledger ships working programmability, Xahau’s claim narrows from being the ecosystem’s smart contract chain to offering a particular style of lightweight logic against a far more liquid competitor. The counterweights are timing, since XRPL amendments require sustained eighty percent validator support and can stall for years, and genuine design differences between the two approaches.

Why did XRPL validators never adopt Hooks? The amendment never reached the sustained supermajority the ledger’s governance requires, and no single public explanation covers it. Ripple’s chief technology officer stated at the time of the fork that he did not believe validators were voting on political grounds and that Xahau had made good decisions, describing the fork as a reasonable path forward for the technology.

What would settle the competition? Activation and adoption, in that order. The amendment vote on Smart Escrows converts the parent’s programmability from a roadmap to a fact, and developer behavior afterward, new deployments and where tooling investment goes, decides which environment accumulates gravity. Ecosystem history suggests capability alone does not determine the outcome. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

While the market watched the token and the trade press counted the acquisitions, Ripple became the second-largest corporate political donor in America. The crypto industry now supplies more than a third of all corporate election money, its flagship super PAC holds a $193 million war chest, and the bill it was all built to pass is on the Senate floor this month. Here is the audit of the spend.

Summary

Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, a figure disclosed ahead of the January Federal Election Commission deadline and larger than the entire crypto industry deployed across all of 2024. Ripple has contributed about $48 million this cycle, second only to Andreessen Horowitz among corporate donors by one accounting, alongside Coinbase at roughly $56 million, with a further $1 million sent directly to a single Senate candidate. Public Citizen’s tally puts total crypto election spending near $189 million, roughly 37% of all corporate money in the cycle, more than artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online gambling combined. The structure is three PACs, not one: Fairshake for bipartisan candidate spending, Protect Progress for Democratic races, and Defend American Jobs for Republican ones, a design that lets the same money work both sides without appearing in the same place. The investment gets marked this month: the market-structure bill the spending exists to pass faces its decisive Senate window before the August recess, and roughly $110 million of the war chest remains unspent with the November midterms four months out. Ripple spent about $4 billion buying companies over three years, and this publication audited that empire last week. The company also spent roughly $48 million buying something else, and almost nobody has audited that at all. The second purchase does not appear on any acquisition list, produces no revenue line, and cannot be valued by any multiple, but it is aimed at the same outcome as the first: a legal environment in which the assembled business is permitted to operate. Ripple is now, by one national tally, the second-largest corporate political donor in the United States this cycle, behind only Andreessen Horowitz and ahead of every bank, airline, pharmaceutical company, and defense contractor in the country. It sits alongside Coinbase inside Fairshake, the crypto industry’s flagship super PAC network, which entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, more than the entire industry deployed across the whole of the 2024 elections, and which has already spent more than $82 million with four months of campaign still to run. The industry as a whole now supplies more than a third of all corporate election money in America. This piece is the ledger: what was given, how the machine is built, what the last cycle’s version of it actually bought, where it demonstrably failed, and why the next few weeks are when the position gets marked.

The ledger, itemized Start with the numbers, because their scale is the part most coverage understates.

Fairshake and its affiliates disclosed roughly $193 million on hand in January, ahead of the Federal Election Commission’s reporting deadline, a figure about 37% higher than its July 2025 disclosure. The second half of 2025 supplied the jump: Ripple contributed $25 million in a single commitment, Andreessen Horowitz added $24 million, and Coinbase had already put in $25 million earlier in the year, roughly $74 million from three companies in six months. Cycle-to-date totals run higher than those individual checks. Public Citizen’s accounting puts Coinbase at about $56 million and Ripple at about $48 million across the cycle’s channels, with a separate tally ranking Ripple second among all corporate donors nationally behind Andreessen Horowitz at $51.65 million. The figures differ because the counting differs, some tallies aggregate only Fairshake contributions while others include direct candidate giving and other committees, and any honest citation has to say which. What no accounting disputes is the order of magnitude: three crypto companies have put roughly $150 million into a single election cycle.

The industry total is the number that reframes everything. Public Citizen puts crypto’s 2026 election spending near $189 million, approximately 37% of all corporate political money in the cycle, against $517 million in total corporate spending that is itself up 12% from all of 2024. Artificial intelligence and Big Tech combined contributed about $60 million; online gambling about $45.6 million. One industry, younger than the iPhone, now outspends every other corporate sector in American politics, and roughly $56 million of crypto money went to MAGA Inc alongside the $82 million flowing through Fairshake.

Beyond the flagship network sits additional capacity: a newer vehicle called Fellowship PAC claimed a $100 million commitment for pro-crypto candidates, meaning the sector’s declared electoral firepower exceeds a quarter of a billion dollars before a single general-election ballot has been counted.

And then there is the retail-scale detail that shows the strategy has a second gear. Ripple sent $1 million directly to John Deaton, the pro-crypto attorney who lost Massachusetts’s 2024 Senate race to Elizabeth Warren by nearly twenty points and is running again in 2026 for the state’s other seat. Direct candidate contributions of that size are unusual, visible, and personal in a way super PAC money is not, which makes the Deaton line the clearest statement of intent in the entire ledger.

The machine: three PACs, one checkbook The structure deserves explanation, because its design is the reason the money works harder than its size suggests.

Fairshake operates as three entities. Fairshake itself directs funds to candidates across both parties. Protect Progress spends in Democratic races. Defend American Jobs spends in Republican ones. The architecture solves a specific problem in American electoral finance: money that visibly funds both parties is politically awkward in primaries, where partisan credibility is the currency, so the network splits itself into partisan-facing vehicles that draw from the same donor base and coordinate the same strategy. A Democratic primary voter sees Protect Progress; a Republican primary voter sees Defend American Jobs; both are the same industry, and neither ad mentions cryptocurrency at all, because Fairshake’s signature tactic has always been to spend on issues unrelated to its own, funding advertisements about housing, healthcare, or a candidate’s record while the crypto position remains the invisible criterion.

The targeting is equally deliberate. Fairshake concentrates in primaries, where money moves outcomes furthest per dollar, and in a small number of races selected for signaling value. Protect Progress backed Adrian Boafo in a Maryland Democratic primary this cycle, and he won. That pattern, early money in low-turnout contests, is how a nine-figure war chest contests dozens of races without ever needing to win a national argument about digital assets.

The strategic effect is the one Fairshake’s own spokespeople describe most plainly: the network is standing infrastructure now, not a one-cycle experiment. The 2024 build converted heavy experimental spending into permanent capability, with money left over, $64 million carried into this cycle before a dollar of new fundraising. An industry that can credibly promise to spend against a legislator in the next primary does not need to spend in most of them, which is the quiet dividend of the whole enterprise and the reason the unspent balance matters as much as the deployed one.

What the money bought last time The 2024 record is the only evidence base for what this spending achieves, and it points in one direction while carrying an important asterisk.

Fairshake and its affiliates raised approximately $93 million across the 2023-2024 build and spent more than $130 million on media buys supporting candidates they classified as pro-crypto and opposing those classified as anti-crypto. Two results defined the cycle’s reputation: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, both incumbent House members regarded as industry critics, lost primaries in which Fairshake-funded advertising was widely credited as a decisive factor. Neither race was fought on crypto policy. Both outcomes were read across Capitol Hill as proof that the industry could end a career in a primary, and that reading, more than any individual seat, is what the money actually purchased. Legislative behavior since has been consistent with the lesson having landed: the House passed the market-structure bill 294 to 134, the stablecoin statute cleared with bipartisan support, and the number of members willing to be publicly identified as anti-crypto has thinned considerably.

The asterisk is Massachusetts. The industry’s most direct 2024 investment, backing John Deaton against Elizabeth Warren, its most prominent legislative opponent, failed by nearly twenty points, and it failed in the way that matters analytically: money could not make a general-electorate race about crypto when the electorate cared about something else. That result maps the strategy’s boundary precisely. Fairshake money is extremely effective in low-turnout primaries where a modest advertising advantage decides a small electorate, and largely ineffective in high-salience general elections where partisan identity dominates. Deaton is running again in 2026, with another $1 million from Ripple already committed, which will test whether the boundary moved or whether the industry is buying the same lesson twice.

The countervailing case, made properly An audit owes the other side its strongest form, and there are two of them, pointing in opposite directions.

The critics’ case is structural rather than moral. Public Citizen’s objection is not that crypto participates in politics but that the concentration distorts: when a single industry supplies more than a third of all corporate election money, the ordinary pluralism that keeps any one sector from dominating a legislature stops functioning, and legislators facing a nine-figure adversary in their next primary make different choices than legislators facing ordinary lobbying. The insider-adjacent critique is sharper still. The industry is spending to shape the rules governing its own regulation, and the rules in question, market structure, agency jurisdiction, and enforcement authority, determine whether the same companies face securities liability. That is not corruption in any legal sense, and it is exactly the arrangement campaign-finance reformers have described as legalized capture for fifty years.

The industry’s case is that this is what every regulated sector does, and it is not a weak argument. Banking, pharmaceuticals, energy, and telecommunications have all spent decades funding candidates and shaping the statutes that govern them, and crypto arrived to a legal environment in which its participants faced enforcement actions predicated on rules nobody had written for them. Political spending, on this reading, is the industry’s only proportionate response to an existential regulatory posture, and its bipartisan structure, funding Democrats and Republicans by design, is evidence of issue-based rather than partisan intent. Both cases are true simultaneously: this is normal American interest-group politics, and it is happening at a scale and concentration that has few peers in the modern record.

NEW: More than 100 crypto companies, including Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, are pressing the Senate Banking Committee to move forward with the CLARITY Act, citing risks of jobs moving overseas without US regulatory clarity https://t.co/NFsjGXWGUB pic.twitter.com/OObAR7EP8j

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 24, 2026 The week the position gets marked Which brings the ledger to the present, where several clocks converge at once.

The market-structure legislation that the entire apparatus exists to pass faces its decisive Senate window before the August recess, with the outcome resting on a small number of Democratic crossover votes and a negotiation whose remaining disputes this publication has covered in detail. Fairshake’s money did not buy those votes and cannot, super PAC spending is prospective leverage over future primaries, not a transaction over a pending bill, but it is unquestionably part of the environment in which those senators are calculating. If the bill passes, the industry’s electoral investment will be credited with having built the conditions for it, and the remaining balance rolls into November with a validated theory. If it fails, roughly $110 million of unspent capacity meets a midterm election in which the industry has both the resources and the stated motive to remove specific legislators from office, and the 2027 Congress becomes the target instead.

Either way, the more interesting question for Ripple specifically is the one the ledger poses and cannot answer: the company has now spent about $4 billion assembling an institutional financial business and about $48 million assembling the political conditions for it, and only one of those investments has a disclosed return. The empire, as this publication’s audit found, is designed to succeed with or without the token. The political spend is designed to make the empire legal. Neither line item is about XRP, which is perhaps the most honest summary available of where Ripple’s actual priorities sit, and the market that still prices the company through its token’s chart is, once again, reading the wrong ledger.

What to watch The FEC filings after the Senate acts. Contribution and expenditure reports covering the coming weeks will show whether the industry accelerates into November or banks the balance. Sharp increases immediately after a legislative outcome, in either direction, would confirm the spending is tightly coupled to the bill rather than to a general political posture.

Deaton’s Massachusetts numbers. The rematch is the strategy’s clearest controlled experiment: the same candidate, the same state, a different seat, and a second round of industry money. A materially closer result would suggest the 2024 ceiling has lifted; a repeat would confirm that Fairshake money buys primaries and not general elections.

Which incumbents draw funded challengers. Watch whether the senators who blocked or slowed the market-structure bill face Fairshake-affiliated primary spending in their next cycles. That is the mechanism by which the 2024 lesson gets re-taught, and it is the most direct measure of whether the industry treats this vote as a scorecard.

The disclosure gap. Independent tallies of crypto political money differ by tens of millions depending on which vehicles are counted, and some contributions surface only in later filings. Any figure quoted before the FEC’s next full disclosure cycle, including the ones in this piece, is provisional, and the revisions are usually upward.

A closing observation about what this spending is not, because the distinction gets lost in the headline numbers. Campaign money is the smaller and more visible half of the industry’s influence apparatus; the larger half is conventional lobbying, trade associations, regulatory comment letters, personnel flowing between agencies and firms, and the technical assistance that shapes statutory language line by line long before any floor vote. Fairshake’s $193 million buys electoral leverage, which is a blunt instrument aimed at composition: who sits in the chamber. The quieter machinery aims at text: what the bill says once the chamber has been settled. Ripple’s participation in both is the reason the acquisition audit and this one belong on the same shelf, since a chartered bank application, a prime brokerage, and a stablecoin all depend on statutory definitions that are drafted in rooms no super PAC advertisement can reach. Judged only by the electoral ledger, the industry’s investment looks enormous and its returns ambiguous. Judged across both channels, the returns are already visible in the shape of the legislation itself, an asset taxonomy the industry helped define, a developer shield it asked for, a grandfather clause that resolves its most valuable assets’ status by statute. The $48 million is the part that files with the Federal Election Commission. It is not the part that writes the law, and the two should never be confused, least of all by anyone trying to estimate what the money actually bought.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or political advice. Campaign finance figures are drawn from third-party tallies and disclosures that vary by methodology and are revised as filings are published. Nothing here is a recommendation regarding any company, asset, candidate, or political position. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 26, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions How much has Ripple spent on US politics this cycle? Approximately $48 million across the 2026 cycle by Public Citizen’s accounting, including a $25 million contribution to the Fairshake network disclosed in late 2025, plus about $1 million given directly to Senate candidate John Deaton in Massachusetts. One national tally ranks Ripple second among all corporate political donors this cycle, behind Andreessen Horowitz at roughly $51.65 million.

What is Fairshake? The cryptocurrency industry’s flagship super PAC network, structured as three affiliated entities: Fairshake, which spends across both parties; Protect Progress, focused on Democratic races; and Defend American Jobs, focused on Republican ones. The network entered the 2026 midterm cycle with roughly $193 million in cash, funded primarily by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, and had spent more than $82 million by mid-year.

How does crypto’s spending compare to other industries? It leads all of them. Public Citizen puts crypto election spending near $189 million, about 37% of all corporate political money in the 2026 cycle, against roughly $60 million from artificial intelligence and Big Tech combined and $45.6 million from online gambling. Total corporate election spending reached about $517 million, up 12% from the entire 2024 cycle.

Did this spending work in 2024? In primaries, apparently yes. Fairshake and affiliates spent more than $130 million on media in 2024, and industry-funded advertising was widely credited with defeating incumbent House members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in primaries, outcomes read across Congress as proof the sector could end a career. In general elections the record is worse: the industry’s backing of John Deaton against Elizabeth Warren failed by nearly twenty points.

Why do the ads rarely mention crypto? Because Fairshake’s tactic is to spend on locally salient issues while the crypto position operates as the invisible selection criterion. Advertising in these races typically addresses housing, healthcare, or a candidate’s record, which is more persuasive to primary electorates than digital-asset policy and avoids making the industry itself the subject of the campaign.

Does this money buy votes on pending legislation? Not directly, and the distinction matters legally and analytically. Super PAC spending is independent expenditure aimed at future elections, not payment for legislative action, and coordination with campaigns is prohibited. Its influence is prospective: legislators weigh the possibility of a well-funded primary challenge, which shapes the environment around votes without constituting a transaction over any particular one.

What is the criticism of this level of spending? Public Citizen and similar groups argue the concentration distorts representation: when one industry supplies more than a third of corporate election money, the pluralism that prevents any single sector from dominating legislative outcomes weakens, particularly when the industry is funding the rules governing its own regulation. The industry’s response is that banking, pharmaceuticals, and energy have done the same for decades, and that political participation is a proportionate answer to enforcement-driven regulation.

What happens to the unspent money? Roughly $110 million of the war chest remained unspent at mid-year with the November midterms approaching, and the industry has additional declared capacity, including a newer vehicle claiming a $100 million commitment. If the pending market-structure legislation passes, that balance rolls into November behind a validated strategy; if it fails, the same money meets an election in which the industry has stated its intent to change the composition of Congress. This is educational analysis, not investment or political advice.

Ripple ekosistemi son günlerde hem kurumsal tarafta hem de XRP Ledger ağında dikkat çeken gelişmelere sahne oldu. Şirket, RLUSD stablecoin’i için yeni bir kurumsal platform devreye alırken, ödeme altyapısına yönelik stratejik bir yatırım gerçekleştirdi. Binance’in RLUSD ve XRP kullanıcılarına sunduğu yeni teşvikler ile XRP ETF‘lerine yönelik talebin sürmesi de ekosistemde öne çıkan başlıklar arasında yer aldı.

Buna karşın XRP fiyatı son toparlanmasını korumakta zorlanıyor. Analistler, teknik görünümün hâlâ aşağı yönlü riskler taşıdığına dikkat çekerken yatırımcılar kritik destek ve direnç seviyelerini yakından izliyor.

Ripple RLUSD İçin Kurumsal Platformunu Neden Hayata Geçirdi? Ripple, 23 Temmuz’da Ripple Mint platformunu kullanıma sundu. Yeni platform, kurumsal müşterilere RLUSD basma (mint), geri ödeme (redeem), köprüleme (bridge) ve varlık yönetimini tek bir sistem üzerinden gerçekleştirme imkânı sunuyor.

Şirketler işlemlerini standart arayüz üzerinden yürütebilirken, API ve webhook entegrasyonları sayesinde kendi altyapılarına da bağlanabiliyor. Ripple, bu platformla özellikle ödeme sistemleri, hazine yönetimi ve alım satım operasyonlarında stablecoin kullanımını kolaylaştırmayı hedefliyor.

Ripple’ın Notabene Yatırımı RLUSD İçin Ne Anlama Geliyor? Ripple, regülasyon odaklı ödeme altyapısı sağlayıcısı Notabene’ye stratejik yatırım yaptığını da duyurdu.

İki şirket, RLUSD’yi işletmeler arası stablecoin ödeme platformu Notabene Flow’a entegre etmeyi planlıyor. Açıklamaya göre Notabene ağı, 100’den fazla ülkede faaliyet gösteren 2.300’den fazla finansal kurumu birbirine bağlıyor ve yıllık yaklaşık 2 trilyon dolarlık işlem hacmine aracılık ediyor.

Bu iş birliğiyle Ripple, RLUSD’nin regüle ödeme kuruluşları ve finansal kurumlar tarafından daha geniş ölçekte kullanılmasını hedefliyor.

XRP Ledger’da Yapay Zekâ İşlemleri Neden Rekor Kırdı? XRPL AI Hub verilerine göre XRP Ledger üzerinde yapay zekâ ajanları tarafından gerçekleştirilen işlem sayısı 22 Temmuz itibarıyla 1,4 milyonun üzerine çıktı. Ağda aynı dönemde 129 farklı işletmenin aktif olduğu belirtilirken, bu büyüme Ripple’ın haziran ayında tanıttığı yapay zekâ geliştirme kitinin ardından geldi.

Veriler, geliştiricilerin XRP Ledger’ı makineden makineye ödemeler ve otomatik finansal işlemler gibi kullanım alanlarında test etmeye devam ettiğini gösteriyor.

Binance RLUSD ve XRP Kullanıcılarına Hangi Teşvikleri Sunuyor? Binance, RLUSD kullanıcılarına yönelik yeni ödül programını duyurdu.

Borsaya göre uygun varlıklarda değişken getiri oranı %22,25 seviyesine ulaştı. Binance Earn ve Margin ürünleri üzerinden RLUSD tutan veya kullanan yatırımcılar ise haftalık XRP ödüllerinden yararlanabiliyor.

Ancak borsa, getiri oranlarının piyasa koşulları ve kullanıcı katılımına bağlı olarak değişebileceğini vurguladı.

XRP Fiyatında Hangi Seviyeler Takip Ediliyor? XRP, hafta içinde 1,16 dolar seviyesini test etmesinin ardından yeniden 1,10 dolar civarında işlem görüyor. Böylece son yükseliş hareketinin önemli bölümü geri verilmiş oldu.

Teknik görünümde XRP’nin geniş bir düşüş kanalı içinde hareket etmeyi sürdürdüğü belirtiliyor. Analistlere göre 1,18 dolar seviyesi ilk önemli direnç konumunda bulunuyor. Bu bölgeden gelebilecek olası satış baskısı mevcut düşüş trendinin devam etmesine neden olabilir.

Öte yandan alıcıların daha önce 1,02-1,04 dolar aralığındaki destek bölgesini koruması olumlu bir sinyal olarak değerlendiriliyor. Bu bölgenin kaybedilmesi halinde XRP’nin yeniden 1 doların altını test etme riski gündeme gelebilir. Kısa vadede izlenen en güçlü direnç seviyesi ise 1,28 dolar olarak öne çıkıyor.

Bu içerik genel piyasa verilerine dayanır ve yatırım tavsiyesi değildir. Kendi araştırmanızı yapmanızı öneririz.

Son Dakika kripto para haberleri için hemen tıkla.

Konu ile ilgili yorumlarınızı bize yazabilirsiniz. Ayrıca, bu tarz bilgilendirici içeriklerin devamının gelmesini isterseniz, bizleri Telegram, Youtube ve Twitter kanallarımızdan takip edebilirsiniz.

XRP price rose 0.69% to $1.11 as regulatory optimism and broader market gains supported demand. The global crypto market climbed 1.45% to $2.23 trillion, while Bitcoin reclaimed $65,000. 

The Senate is now under review to pass the CLARITY Act by investors. A potential vote in the week of August 3 might influence the future trend of XRP in the short term and broader institutional trust in crypto markets within the global market.

Senate Unveils Unified CLARITY Act Draft Ahead of Possible August 3 Vote A revised proposal was issued by senators, combining ideas of the Banking and Agriculture committees. This is the first document that comes with an ethics provision. A motion to commence formal consideration can be received on Monday or Tuesday. Senate leaders could then schedule a floor vote during the week of August 3.

The bill aims at providing more transparent oversight guidelines to digital assets and other participants of the market. The advancement would enhance regulatory consistency among exchanges, issuers and investors and institutions in the United States.

🚨NEW CLARITY ACT DRAFT MERGES COMMITTEES, ADDS ETHICS RULES!

A revised version of the Clarity Act has been released, combining the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee texts and introducing an ethics provision for the first time, CoinDesk reports.

A motion to proceed is… pic.twitter.com/Vc3TNIHSQD

— Crypto Banter (@crypto_banter) July 27, 2026

XRP is also vulnerable to the legislative cycle since more transparent regulations can facilitate broader institutional involvement. Any delays or retracted agreements would undermine new ground.

Crypto Market Gains as Bitcoin Price Reclaims $65,000 The crypto market also improved as investors embraced regulatory developments and reduced tensions. Bitcoin price moved above $65,000 after its fourth consecutive weekly gain.

The United States and Iran paused attacks for a second day, pushing oil prices down 5%. Ethereum price ended at over $1,960 and XRP price at close to $1.10. The momentum indicators indicated a slight positive bias in assets.

Markets focused on the Federal Reserve’s July 29 decision. CME FedWatch assigned a 36.3% chance of a rate increase. The future action of XRP can be based on the Senate development, the stability of Bitcoin, and the information given by the Fed.

Source: CME data XRP Open Interest Reaches $2.43B as Derivatives Trading Accelerates XRP derivatives market showed increased trading volume with a total volume of 18.32% increasing to $1.28 billion. Open interest grew by 0.68% to become 2.43 billion, with a slight rise in active futures positions.

Options trading posted the largest percentage gain, climbing 96.23% to $2.90 million. Options open interest also advanced 3.45% to $67.88 million during the reporting period.

Source: Coinglass data Futures trading was still prevalent as the total open interest was much higher than the options market value. The figures indicated an increase in trading in XRP derivatives, but the volume increased at a rate higher than open interest.

XRP Price Prediction: Will a Break Above $1.12 Send XRP to $1.15? The XRP price has soared to $1.11 following the support level of $1.09 defended by the buyers in the recent four-hour session.

The Relative Strength Index was close to 50.85 which indicated balanced momentum with no overbought. Meanwhile, the MACD histogram changed to positive after the MACD line crossed the signal line.

The XRP price was trading close to $1.107, and it was above the critical level of $1.10 as it rebounded following the July 25 fall. Price action is currently under direct pressure at $1.12 that declined on numerous recovery efforts.

Tradingview A four-hour close higher than confirmed above $1.12 may kick off the move to the stronger $1.15 resistance area. The subsequent buying momentum can now focus on $1.16, to which the sellers just halted the last surge.

But the inability to hold onto $1.10 will leave XRP vulnerable to a fresh decline to $1.09 and 1.08. Further downward movement can put the area of support at $1.06 at the forefront.

XRP has already dipped as low as $1.01 during the ongoing bear market pullback, reviving talk that the token could briefly slip below a dollar before this cycle’s downturn runs its course.

A Familiar Pattern From the Last Cycle

One analyst pointed to XRP’s 2022 bear market as a reference point. XRP bottomed near $0.28 in June 2022, then retested that same support level roughly half a dozen times through January 2023, including a final touch at $0.32 before the market turned. The current setup, the analyst argues, looks similar, just at a higher price range this cycle.

Exchanges Keep Shutting Down

Bitmart just became the second crypto exchange to shut down in less than a week, following BitMEX’s earlier announcement. Bitmart’s native token, BMX, collapsed more than 60% after the shutdown news broke. A former major Bitcoin mining pool also filed for bankruptcy, reportedly holding just $1 million in assets against $500 million in liabilities.

Several digital asset treasury companies and at least one crypto hedge fund have also wound down operations in recent weeks. Analysts tracking the space describe this wave of collapses as a sign the market is clearing out excess leverage and weaker players, a pattern some say has historically preceded major bottoms in past cycles.

Institutions Are Pushing for Regulatory Clarity

Support for the CLARITY Act has grown among major financial institutions ahead of the Senate’s August 7 recess deadline. Both Charles Schwab and Fidelity have pushed the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, joined by the Fraternal Order of Police and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who has publicly called for the bill’s passage.

New Upgrades Coming to the XRP Ledger

Away from price action, the XRP Ledger has several technical upgrades moving through its amendment process. The XRP Ledger’s batched fix update has already passed its 80% vote requirement and is expected to go live within days. Additional upgrades under discussion include:

Batch transactions, allowing up to eight transactions to be bundled into a single atomic actionZero-knowledge proof privacy features, enabling confidential transfersSponsored fees and reserves, letting platforms cover the XRP wallet creation cost for new usersPermission delegation, allowing specific account permissions without full custody transferDynamic multi-purpose tokens, which can carry updatable fields after launchTwo additional features are drawing particular attention: a Single Asset Vault that would let users pool XRP, RLUSD, or other tokens together, and a companion lending protocol built on top of it, enabling fixed-term, uncollateralized loans intended for institutional use.

Why the XRP Ledger’s DEX Matters

With centralized exchanges continuing to shut down, some analysts are pointing to the XRP Ledger’s built-in decentralized exchange as a safeguard for token holders. Since the DEX operates independently of any single platform, users can continue trading and earning yield on XRP even if individual exchanges they relied on disappear.

Story Ends Here

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Read the Next News

The XRP Ledger added about $2.6 billion in tokenized real-world asset value during the past six months, excluding stablecoins, according to data from RWA.xyz. 

Summary

XRP Ledger added $2.6 billion in RWA value, ranking second among blockchains over six months. JMWH alone represents $2.23 billion, making tokenized energy XRPL’s largest real-world asset category by value. Most XRPL RWA value is represented, while distributed assets total only about $323 million currently. That placed XRPL second among tracked blockchain networks for net RWA inflows during the period. BNB Chain ranked first with about $3 billion, while Stellar followed XRPL with roughly $2.1 billion.

The increase lifted XRPL’s combined distributed and represented RWA value to about $4.38 billion on July 26. The RWA.xyz dashboard listed $323.21 million in distributed assets and $4.06 billion in represented assets. The network also held $995.12 million in stablecoins, taking its broader total above $5.37 billion when those tokens are included.

XRP Ledger moves higher in RWA rankings The six-month figures placed XRPL ahead of several larger smart-contract networks for new tokenized asset value. Solana added about $1.6 billion, while Avalanche attracted roughly $972 million. Ethereum remained the largest home for distributed tokenized assets, but its net addition during the measured period was lower at about $424 million.

The latest rise continues a trend visible earlier in 2026.XRPL moved into sixth place in the tokenized RWA rankings in February after adding $354 million in one month. A crypto.news report in July found that tokenized assets on the ledger had passed $3 billion as developers added compliance tools, permissioned trading and proposed lending features.

Tokenized energy drives most of XRPL’s total Justoken’s JMWH product accounts for the largest share of XRPL’s RWA value. RWA.xyz valued the represented commodity asset at $2.229 billion on July 26. Each JMWH token represents one megawatt-hour of contracted energy output. The issuer mints tokens against energy agreements and burns them after the electricity is delivered and consumed.

The asset also shows why represented value and active onchain liquidity are not the same measure. RWA.xyz recorded only 19 JMWH holders, one active address over 30 days, no monthly transfers and no monthly transfer volume. The token therefore works mainly as a blockchain record for energy contracts rather than a widely traded asset. JMWH alone accounts for about 51% of XRPL’s total RWA value.

Justoken said it had tokenized more than $2.84 billion in total value across its products. In March, the company announced an energy tokenization project with Argentina-based power producer YPF Luz using the XRP Ledger. The wider product links blockchain records with contracts for electricity generation and consumption.

Distributed assets and stablecoins expand XRPL’s distributed asset segment remains much smaller than its represented segment, but several financial products now operate on the network. RWA.xyz listed about $323 million in distributed assets. Ondo Finance, Braza Crypto, OpenEden Digital, Société Générale-FORGE and other issuers contribute to this category through tokenized Treasuries, credit products and regulated digital money.

Ripple’s RLUSD remains the largest stablecoin platform on XRPL. RWA.xyz showed about $894.7 million in RLUSD on the network, while all XRPL stablecoins totalled about $995.12 million. Braza Crypto ranked behind RLUSD with products worth about $83.4 million. Stablecoin transfer volume reached $4 billion over 30 days.

A May pilot also tested how tokenized funds can connect XRPL with bank payment rails. As crypto.news reported, Ripple redeemed part of its holdings in Ondo Finance’s OUSG Treasury product on XRPL. Mastercard sent settlement instructions to Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, which moved U.S. dollars to Ripple’s Singapore bank account.

Ondo said the asset leg settled in under five seconds. Ondo Finance President Ian De Bode called it the “first time tokenized U.S. Treasuries have settled across borders and banks in near real time.” The transaction combined a public blockchain asset transfer with traditional bank settlement.

RWA growth does not equal direct XRP demand RWA growth measures asset value recorded or issued on the ledger. It does not show how much XRP investors purchased or how often they used the native token. Most institutional products can use XRPL for issuance and settlement while paying only small network fees in XRP. Stablecoins such as RLUSD can also handle the cash side of transactions without using XRP as a bridge asset.

The asset mix also matters when comparing networks. Represented assets refer to offchain holdings or contracts recorded on a blockchain, while distributed assets are issued and held more directly onchain. XRPL’s represented value accounts for more than 92% of its non-stablecoin RWA total. JMWH alone drives more than half of that figure.

Even so, XRPL has added more issuers and asset types during 2026. Its RWA count reached 373, while the number of tracked holders rose 14.29% over 30 days to 176. The ledger’s stablecoin holders reached about 60,080. These figures show a broader tokenization base, although ownership remains concentrated in several products.

Ripple and XRPL developers are also building infrastructure for regulated markets. Crypto.news reported that permissioned domains, credentials and a permissioned exchange layer now support identity-based access rules on the public ledger. Proposed lending standards could add fixed-term credit products if validators approve them. The next stage will depend on whether issuers turn the growing asset base into regular transfers, trading and settlement activity.

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Flare Networks co-founder and CEO Hugo Philion has announced the start of a six-month phase of large-scale integration that is expected to radically transform the XRP-based decentralized finance ecosystem, known as XRPFi. 

The first technological updates will begin rolling out within the next two weeks, turning Flare into a fully programmable layer for the historically isolated XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Because XRPL was originally designed exclusively for fast payments and does not support smart contracts, billions of dollars worth of XRP have remained in wallets for years without any practical utility. 

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Flare is attempting to solve this problem through its FAssets system. Users can convert their coins into the wrapped FXRP token at a 1:1 ratio via hot wallets, gaining access to staking, liquidity pools, and on-chain lending.

How Flare plans to attract 5 billion XRP over the next six monthsInvestors have embraced the initiative, and FXRP issuance has already exceeded 150 million tokens. In the long term, Philion expects the protocol to attract up to 5 billion XRP, representing approximately 5% of the coin's total supply and potentially creating a real shortage of the asset on exchanges.

At the same time, the team is addressing the main problem of traditional DeFi: complete transparency, which discourages large capital holders.

Starting in the next couple of weeks the next 6 months are going to be transformative for XRPFi through Flare.

— Hugo Philion (@HugoPhilion) July 26, 2026 The upcoming Confidential Compute technology, based on trusted execution environments, or TEEs, will allow institutions to execute large trades and take out loans while keeping commercially sensitive information hidden from competitors, with transactions remaining fully and mathematically verifiable on the main network.

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However, whether the XRP price can justify retail investors' expectations remains an open question. Contrary to hopes of an immediate price surge, the current news backdrop requires realism. 

The six-month period outlined by Philion is a window for deploying the code, while institutional players will require additional months to conduct security audits of the new bridges.

In addition, the ecosystem critically needs a large inflow of liquidity in stablecoins such as USDT and USDC before lending protocols can become fully operational, something Flare's management has directly acknowledged during private sessions.  Until these infrastructure challenges are resolved, XRP's market price will continue to follow broader macroeconomic trends and Bitcoin's movements, temporarily ignoring local successes achieved by developers.

Kansas-based wealth manager Leisure Capital Management has revealed a position in Franklin Templeton’s XRP ETF during the second quarter of the year.

According to a newly filed regulatory form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Leisure Capital Management held 16,745 shares of the Franklin XRP Trust ETF (XRPZ). They were valued at roughly $206,000 as of June 30. 

The investment is not significant, but it shows that XRP is gaining more and more acceptance. 

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The Overland Park, Kansas-based wealth management firm manages investment portfolios for individuals and institutions and holds traditional equities, bonds and ETFs. 

Image via https://depositphotos.com/photos/kansas.htmlIts XRP ETF position appeared alongside holdings in major companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon.

More institutional interest Earlier in July, Realta Investment Advisors reported a position in the REX-Osprey XRP ETF with more than $260 million in reported holdings. 

Vista Finance also disclosed exposure to the Franklin XRP Trust ETF, holding 129,958 shares worth approximately $11.45 million.

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Brookstone Capital Management revealed a $71 million XRP ETF position. At the same time, CPR Investments disclosed a $363,000 position in the ProShares Ultra XRP ETF.

Institutional activity has also extended beyond ETFs. 

Galaxy Digital, Arrington Capital, The Private Shares Fund and GAM Alternatives Lux recently agreed to purchase approximately $130 million worth of Ripple Labs private shares from Linqto as part of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

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The growing number of 13F filings shows that asset managers are increasingly comfortable with XRP, which used to be considered a security by the SEC before being ultimately vindicated. 

ETF structures make it possible for institutions to access the asset through familiar investment channels.  

Ripple (XRP) slides toward the short-term $1.10 support on Friday, as broader crypto market sentiment weighs on crypto assets. The sell-off mainly stems from fears of inflation in the United States (US) amid the ongoing war in the Middle East and rising Oil prices.

Simon-Peter Massabni, Business Development Head at XS.com, says that digital assets are facing repricing risks due to rising geopolitical tensions and inflation fears.

“Rising oil prices, renewed inflation concerns, shifting expectations for US monetary policy, and continued institutional capital inflows are all shaping market sentiment,” Massabni said in a comment.

Ripple Mint launches to expand RLUSD accessRipple announced the launch of Ripple Mint on Wednesday, a platform providing a unified way for institutions to access, mint, redeem and manage the RLUSD stablecoin.

Ripple Mint was designed to address existing gaps in RLUSD execution by offering access to a user interface with built-in control and oversight. The platform also supports programmatic access to enable automation and system-level integration.

Institutions using Ripple Mint can mint and redeem RLUSD directly from the source, bridge RLUSD across chains, track funds throughout the transaction lifecycle, and integrate RLUSD into their internal systems or workflows.

“This expansion also creates stronger utility between XRP and RLUSD together. As RLUSD becomes available across these environments, XRP will increasingly serve as complementary assets for liquidity, settlement, swaps, collateral, and payments activity across supported chains,” Ripple stated in the press release.

Meanwhile, institutional interest in XRP-related digital assets, such as spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), is fading, as evidenced by muted activity on Wednesday and Thursday. Cumulative weekly inflows stand at $8 million through Thursday, according to SoSoValue.

XRP ETF flows | Source: SoSoValue“In my view, what we are witnessing is not the beginning of a new bearish cycle, but rather a healthy repricing of risk following a strong rally, provided that institutional demand remains intact and does not give way to broad-based selling pressure,” Massabni added.

Price analysis: XRP bears poised to tighten gripXRP trades at $1.11, holding in a corrective phase below key moving averages, which keeps the broader bias bearish despite the recent stabilization. Price action remains capped by the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $1.14, with the Parabolic SAR at $1.07 also positioned above spot and reinforcing overhead pressure.

Momentum is mixed, as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovers near a neutral 49 while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram has turned lower, hinting that bullish attempts are losing traction underneath the dominant downtrend defined by the downward trending moving averages.

XRP/USDT daily chartOn the topside, initial resistance is seen at the Parabolic SAR level around $1.07, followed by the 50-day EMA at $1.14, where a daily close above would be needed to ease immediate downside pressure. Beyond that, the 100-day EMA at $1.23 and the 200-day EMA near $1.43 form a broader supply band that would likely cap any extended recovery unless buyers regain stronger control.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)

Ripple FAQs Ripple is a payments company that specializes in cross-border remittance. The company does this by leveraging blockchain technology. RippleNet is a network used for payments transfer created by Ripple Labs Inc. and is open to financial institutions worldwide. The company also leverages the XRP token.

XRP is the native token of the decentralized blockchain XRPLedger. The token is used by Ripple Labs to facilitate transactions on the XRPLedger, helping financial institutions transfer value in a borderless manner. XRP therefore facilitates trustless and instant payments on the XRPLedger chain, helping financial firms save on the cost of transacting worldwide.

XRPLedger is based on a distributed ledger technology and the blockchain using XRP to power transactions. The ledger is different from other blockchains as it has a built-in inflammatory protocol that helps fight spam and distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks. The XRPL is maintained by a peer-to-peer network known as the global XRP Ledger community.

XRP uses the interledger standard. This is a blockchain protocol that aids payments across different networks. For instance, XRP’s blockchain can connect the ledgers of two or more banks. This effectively removes intermediaries and the need for centralization in the system. XRP acts as the native token of the XRPLedger blockchain engineered by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto and David Schwartz.

XRP price today is down 2.39% to $1.11 today, underperforming a slightly negative market.XRP ETFs pulled in nearly $1.47 billion in cumulative inflows through late June. An estimated 200 million to 300 million XRP reach the market every single month. The CLARITY Act still lacks the 60 Senate votes needed to beat a filibuster now.XRP is down 2.39% to $1.11 today, underperforming a slightly negative market, in a session driven primarily by broader macro pressure rather than anything specific to the token itself.

The selloff isn’t isolated to crypto. Roughly $2.8 trillion was wiped out across stocks, gold, silver, and crypto in the past 24 hours, following a disappointing Alphabet earnings report that raised concerns about AI spending outpacing profits. Trump has also told Axios he is close to ordering a larger military strike on Iran, adding another layer of macro fear across risk assets.

Technical PictureXRP ran up to $1.16 earlier this week before flushing back down to $1.10 support. The broader trend remains down, with no evidence yet that a major low is in place. Important resistance sits between $1.19 and $1.42, a zone that hasn’t even been tested yet. 

If the current bounce fails and price breaks below $1.14, the analyst sees a reasonable bear market target near $0.74 to $0.75, potentially aligned with Bitcoin forming its own cycle low around September or October.

CLARITY Act Remains Stuck

Crypto’s regulatory centerpiece, the CLARITY Act, is still short of the votes needed to pass. The bill needs 60 votes in the Senate, and Republicans currently don’t appear to have all 50 of their own members locked in, let alone the additional Democratic support required. 

Senators from Utah and Texas have echoed bank concerns about deposit flight, a senator from Louisiana has voiced hesitation, and at least one Republican has flatly opposed the ethics provisions as written. Senator Elizabeth Warren has publicly urged colleagues to vote against the bill entirely.

Not everyone in finance opposes it. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has publicly called for advancing the legislation. Delays in releasing bill text have pushed negotiations dangerously close to the August 7 recess deadline, according to political reporting cited in recent coverage, leaving a shrinking window to get a vote scheduled at all.

What’s Actually Changed for XRP

Away from daily price swings, XRP’s underlying legal and market position has genuinely shifted over the past year:

The five-year SEC lawsuit is fully resolved, with both sides dropping appeals and the original $125 million penalty reduced to $50 million.Seven US spot XRP ETFs now exist, following Canary Capital’s XRPC launch in November 2025.XRP ETFs pulled in nearly $1.47 billion in cumulative inflows through late June, spanning seven to eight consecutive weeks of net buying before that streak broke with a $7.18 million outflow the week of July 6.Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, has grown to a $1.5 billion market cap, roughly tripling over the past year, with Mastercard piloting settlements on Ripple’s infrastructure.Why the Price Hasn’t FollowedDespite that progress, several structural factors continue to work against XRP specifically:

ETF funds hold only about 1% to 2% of XRP’s circulating supply, limiting their price impact even during strong inflow streaks.RLUSD may compete with XRP rather than support it, since a dollar-backed stablecoin can move money across borders without anyone ever holding XRP. More than 45% of RLUSD supply currently sits on Ethereum rather than the XRP Ledger.On-Demand Liquidity volume is real, but XRP is typically only held for a few seconds mid-transaction, generating volume without creating genuine demand to hold the coin long-term.Total value locked in XRP Ledger lending and trading apps has fallen roughly 70% from its 2025 peak.An estimated 200 million to 300 million XRP reach the market every single month from Ripple’s escrow releases, with roughly 38 billion XRP still locked and awaiting future release.A newly launched competing stablecoin consortium, Open USD, backed by more than 140 firms including Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, and BlackRock, positions Ripple as just one participant rather than the center of the payments infrastructure XRP was built to support.A Possible Bottom SignalSome experts see recent industry stress as a sign the market may be nearing a cycle low. Crypto exchange BitMEX is shutting down effective September 23. Several digital asset treasury companies and at least one crypto-focused hedge fund have also wound down operations recently, following a broader wave of deleveraging across the sector.

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