XRP ETFs are booming, but a quiet $15 billion payment layer matters more than the price

Four XRP spot ETFs now commerce in the US, with mixed belongings of $941.7 million as of Dec. 18. Grayscale’s GXRP holds $148.1 million, Canary Capital’s XRPC $373.6 million, Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ $189 million, and Bitwise’s XRP ETF $215.6 million.

That stack grew from roughly $336 million at launch in November to present ranges in underneath two months, front-loading a lot of pleasure into a slender window.

XRP now runs two parallel tales: an ETF layer that has already captured regulated US demand, and a funds and infrastructure layer that also has to show it could stand by itself if these flows plateau.

The query is not whether or not XRP has generated curiosity for its ETF merchandise, it is whether or not the asset has sturdy demand anchored in cross-border flows, stablecoin rails, and chronic liquidity that survives when ETF AUM stops climbing.

ETF publicity has already outgrown the $293 million of RLUSD sitting on XRPL as of Dec. 19, in keeping with DefiLlama knowledge. Still, it’s not comparable in magnitude to the $15 billion in Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity processed in 2024.

That means the ETF wrapper is measurable but nonetheless comparatively skinny in comparison with the full circulation operating by means of RippleInternet over a 12 months, and to XRPL address-based and day by day funds.

If ETF flows stagnate, the reply about actual adoption sits in the plumbing, not the tickers.

Payments and hall actuality in 2025

RippleInternet now counts more than 300 monetary establishments throughout 55-plus nations, with roughly 40% actively utilizing XRP for On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) slightly than simply messaging rails.

ODL processed more than $15 billion of cross-border funds in 2024, a 32% year-over-year enhance, with Asia-Pacific accounting for roughly 56% of quantity.

ODL now spans more than 70 hall pairs and covers an estimated 80% of main world remittance corridors. DAS Research places ODL quantity at about $1.3 billion simply in the second quarter of 2025 alone, framed as a part of Ripple’s push to make XRP a core funds infrastructure.

RippleInternet as a complete, together with corridors that don’t but settle in XRP, is processing more than $15 billion in cross-border transaction quantity per 30 days as of 2025.

That distinction matters: many establishments use RippleInternet messaging and fiat-only settlement. XRP solely seems the place pre-funding prices and FX spreads justify taking token volatility threat. The related metrics are ODL quantity, hall protection, and the share of companions routing visitors by means of XRP, not the whole RippleInternet shopper depend.

Global cross-border payment volumes vary from $130 trillion to $150 trillion yearly, in keeping with SWIFT-linked estimates.

Even $30 billion in annual ODL quantity is significant for XRP but marginal for world funds. Real adoption on this axis would appear like ODL volumes compounding from the present $15 billion and the baseline, more than half of RippleInternet purchasers opting into XRP, and hall growth past the APAC remittance niches that dominate right this moment.

On-chain exercise past hypothesis

XRPL dealt with roughly 1.8 million transactions per day in the third quarter of 2025, up about 9% quarter-on-quarter from 1.6 million in the earlier quarter, with typical finality in 3 to five seconds.

Average day by day energetic sender addresses reached about 25,300, with 447,200 new addresses created in the quarter, bringing whole addresses to roughly 6.9 million. Weekly payment counts are up roughly 430% versus 2023 ranges. Payments stay the dominant use case.

“Payment” transactions accounted for about 55.7% of whole exercise in the third quarter of 2025, with day by day payment counts round 989,600.

The RWA angle provides weight. XRPL’s tokenized real-world asset market cap hit $347 million at the end of the third quarter, up 193% quarter-on-quarter, in keeping with rwa.xyz knowledge. The motion was pushed by US Treasury funds like Ondo’s OUSG, industrial paper, and real-estate tokens.

Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin launched in December 2024 on XRPL and Ethereum, and its whole provide sits at $1.3 billion as of Dec. 19. Within XRPL particularly, RLUSD had a market cap of roughly $293 million, up by 41% in the previous 30 days.

Ripple is now piloting RLUSD on L2s like Optimism and Base by way of Wormhole’s NTT normal.

RLUSD is already a billion-plus-dollar asset with a materials but nonetheless minority presence on XRPL, and XRPL’s RWA footprint is now lots of of tens of millions slightly than hobby-scale. Still, it stays tiny versus USDT and USDC on Ethereum and Solana.

Durable on-chain adoption means three issues without delay: payment transactions remaining the dominant sort and rising in absolute phrases, RWA capitalization and RLUSD utilization on XRPL rising slightly than migrating to Ethereum, and energetic addresses and new wallets increasing slightly than spiking round price motion and retracing.

Liquidity construction and institutional plumbing

Kaiko’s crypto asset rating for the third quarter locations XRP tied with Ethereum in second place, with an AA rating of 95 out of 100, incomes full marks for liquidity, market depth, change availability, institutional adoption, and derivatives maturity, on par with Bitcoin.

XRP’s common day by day buying and selling quantity was round $1.73 billion in early 2025, a roughly 22% year-over-year enhance. XRP is handled by market makers more like a top-tier asset than a fringe alt, no matter ETF headlines.

At the DEX and AMM layer on XRPL, common day by day CLOB quantity for fungible issued currencies was about $7.9 million in the third quarter, with round 1 million CLOB trades and roughly 7,800 day by day CLOB merchants. Additionally, common day by day AMM quantity was about $1.7 million.

Those numbers are small versus centralized venues but illustrate fragmented liquidity: deep off-chain order books and perps versus pretty modest on-ledger liquidity, whilst the community turns into more composable with AMMs, oracles, and upcoming smart-contract extensions.

Adoption take a look at

Assume ETF AUM stabilizes round $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion. What must transfer over the subsequent 12 to 24 months to name XRP’s demand “sturdy” slightly than ETF-driven?

First, ODL volumes and hall protection would want to continue to grow from the $15 billion registered in 2024, and from the 70-plus hall pairs.

That means whole annual ODL quantity moving into the tens of billions and staying there, more than half of RippleInternet purchasers opting into XRP slightly than fiat-only rails, and hall growth with disclosed volumes slightly than pilot language.

Second, XRPL’s on-chain funds base of roughly 1.8 million day by day transactions, 6.9 million addresses, and the majority of payment exercise would want to proceed rising slightly than plateau.

A sturdy story has these curves sloping up even when price and ETF flows are flat: more payment transactions, more energetic addresses, more RWA issuance, and RLUSD quantity on XRPL particularly, not simply on Ethereum.

Third, liquidity high quality would want to carry up. Kaiko’s AA, 95/100 profile already has XRP’s depth and by-product construction on par with Ethereum. The take a look at in a stagnation state of affairs is whether or not order-book depth, bid-ask spreads, and open curiosity keep strong when ETF web flows normalize.

If they do, it suggests a base of market-maker and corridor-driven demand that is not chasing ETF narratives.

Fourth, RLUSD and tokenized belongings on XRPL would want to develop from a few hundred million in RWA market cap and about $88.8 million of RLUSD on XRPL into genuinely system-level collateral, slightly than remaining a sidecar to the a lot bigger Ethereum DeFi stack.

If these 4 issues occur whereas ETF AUM is flat, XRP adoption is actual: ETF merchandise are simply one other entry channel into an asset whose demand is anchored in cross-border flows, stablecoin rails, tokenized treasuries, and deep liquidity.

If ODL volumes stall, payment and tackle metrics roll over, RWA and RLUSD development shift off-ledger, and liquidity scores slip as soon as ETF inflows cool, the trustworthy conclusion is that the 2025-26 XRP commerce was largely about ETFs, not structural demand. The plumbing will determine.

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