Key Takeaways
What’s Ripple’s latest strategic move?
Ripple secured $500 million from institutional investors and partnered with Mastercard to enable RLUSD settlements on XRPL.
How are XRP holders affected?
XRP holders are largely sidelined, with only 65% of supply in profit and company XRP sales funding its Wall Street push.
It’s hard to back Ripple CEO’s claim that 2025 has been “without a doubt” an incredible year. Sure, XRP is up 12% YTD but 37% of its supply is still underwater, marking the highest level since the last election cycle.
Still, Ripple [XRP] keeps leading the charge on the institutional front.
Through its strategic pivot, the company has funneled billions of dollars into its ecosystem. But this also raises a key question: Is Ripple’s future driven more by its Wall Street play than by its commitment to XRP holders?
Ripple deepens its institutional foothold with new funding
Looks like Ripple’s entire strategic roadmap is leaning pro-SEC.
In a recent announcement, the company confirmed a $500 million investment from six different institutional investors. Notably, this is a move that pushes Ripple’s valuation to $40 billion.
Simply put, that $40 billion figure places Ripple among the most valuable private companies in crypto. In fact, it would rank the company alongside some top 250 firms in the S&P500 index by market capitalization.
Source: Glassnode
However, it’s the payments market that Ripple continues to tap into.
Building on that, the company rolled out a partnership with Mastercard, to bring RLUSD (its native stablecoin) into the mix.
Notably, the partnership would enable RLUSD settlement for credit card payments on XRPL.
In practice, this means that when a customer buys something with a Mastercard, the underlying “back-end settlement” could happen instantly using RLUSD, with Ripple clearly tapping into its growing RLUSD market.
Scaling Wall Street or serving XRP holders?
The market’s split on whether Ripple’s roadmap is benefitting XRP holders.
On-chain metrics show just 65% of XRP supply in profit, hitting a 12-month low. Basically, a lot of investors who stacked XRP during the election-run peak at $3.35 are now underwater.
Meanwhile, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen offloaded 60 million XRP in Q3, bringing his total down to 2.35 billion from a 3.18 billion peak back in January. Some say this was done to boost Ripple Labs’ enterprise value.
Source: CryptoQuant
Simply put, Ripple dumped XRP to boost company value, not holders.
Critics argue the company is focused on building Wall Street credibility, monetizing XRP sales to fund institutional infrastructure. Case in point: Ripple plans a $1 billion buyback of company shares, not XRP tokens.
Put another way, as Ripple ramps its valuations, XRP holders are mostly sidelined on token gains. This raises questions about whether future XRP sales will continue funding Ripple’s Wall Street push at their expense.
