ripple

XRPLRipple is actively promoting the addition of a layer of lending infrastructure on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), enabling institutions to use on-chain tokenized assets as collateral for financing, while the loan terms are automatically executed by the protocol, with credit assessments and lending decisions still made by off-chain institutions.According to reports, the proposal is named the XRPL Lending Protocol (corresponding to the XLS-65 and XLS-66 standards), which is currently still in the technical draft stage and must be approved through validator voting before it can go live on the mainnet, but it is already available for developer testing on the test network.The design of the protocol splits the lending process into two parts: on-chain mechanisms responsible for fund pool management, interest calculation, repayment execution, and default handling; while borrower credit assessments and loan term settings remain with traditional financial institutions to meet compliance requirements in different jurisdictions.Ripple states that this mechanism is primarily aimed at institutional short-term liquidity needs, such as in cross-border payment scenarios, where temporary financing is obtained through stablecoins or collateralized assets before settlement, to enhance capital efficiency.Analysts believe that this solution attempts to introduce a "rule-based lending infrastructure" similar to traditional finance while maintaining the open network attributes of XRPL, but it still faces competition from established on-chain lending protocols like Aave, Compound, and Maple.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated in an interview with CNBC that he remains optimistic about Bitcoin but believes that Strategy's model of financing Bitcoin purchases through preferred stock has harmed the crypto market.Garlinghouse said, "Financial engineering will not drive long-term value." He believes that the long-term value of any digital asset comes from its utility and stated, "Michael Saylor's team is not focused on the right things, which harms the overall market."The focus of Garlinghouse's criticism is the financing mechanism used by Strategy to accumulate Bitcoin. For about the past year, Strategy has raised funds through the issuance of preferred stock to continue purchasing Bitcoin. Its STRC stock has an annual dividend yield of 11.5%, designed to trade close to $100.Garlinghouse pointed out that STRC is currently about 25% below that level, which is a "harsh denial" of the strategy. STRC hit an all-time low on Thursday, at one point trading about 26% below par value. Meanwhile, Strategy's common stock fell to its lowest level since February 2024, closing around $82 on Friday; Bitcoin dropped below $59,000.This week, Strategy's financing model is facing more pressure. CryptoQuant stated that Strategy should pause Bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash reserves. The coverage period for STRC dividend payments has shrunk from over 7 years to about 14 months. When STRC falls below $100, the mechanism of issuing stock and purchasing Bitcoin will stall, which is also the reason for the company to pause this mechanism.Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer believes that Strategy's financing engine has simply become "less efficient," rather than having failed, and opposes comparing STRC to assets that have completely collapsed.

According to official news, Ripple and SBI Holdings announced that the RLUSD stablecoin has officially launched in Japan and received approval from the Financial Services Agency of Japan, opening up to institutional and retail users through the VCTRADE platform of SBI VC Trade. RLUSD is classified as a new type of electronic payment tool under Japan's Payment Services Act, designed to meet the safety and regulatory standards for foreign-issued stablecoins. Jack McDonald, Senior Vice President of Ripple's stablecoin division, stated that this launch is an important step in expanding access to regulated US dollar stablecoins for Japanese financial institutions and businesses, with RLUSD serving as a bridge for payments, tokenization, and collateral management.

According to official news, Ripple announced that it has received preliminary approval for a crypto asset service provider license issued by the Luxembourg Financial Supervisory Authority, paving the way for the launch of Ripple Payments in the European Economic Area and full compliance with MiCA standards. This preliminary approval will take effect after the final conditions are met.Combined with Ripple's existing electronic money institution license, European financial institutions can access Ripple's crypto asset and stablecoin payment infrastructure through a single integration.

According to Bloomberg, one of Africa's most valuable fintech startups, Flutterwave, has sold a portion of its equity to blockchain company Ripple to drive the expansion of its payment business and strategic cooperation plans.Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola stated in an interview that Ripple's investment has valued Flutterwave at $3.3 billion. However, he declined to disclose the specific amount of Ripple's investment and the percentage of shares Ripple holds in Flutterwave.Flutterwave is one of Africa's largest payment infrastructure companies, providing businesses with cross-border payment, collection, and financial service solutions, while Ripple has been increasingly expanding its presence in the global payment network and stablecoin sectors in recent years. This investment is seen as an important move for Ripple to further expand into the African payment market.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple is attempting to introduce XRP along with its stablecoin Ripple USD into the AI agent payment market, aiming to penetrate the on-chain micropayment system currently dominated by the USD stablecoin USD Coin. It has released the "XRPL AI Starter Kit," providing developers with a toolkit to build AI Agent payment capabilities, enabling agents to complete payments, check balances, and perform wallet operations on the XRP Ledger, and supporting automated payment processes based on the x402 protocol.However, Ripple has not yet disclosed any scaled landing customers or real production-level AI Agent payment transaction data; the solution is still in the early exploratory stage of infrastructure and developer ecosystem.

According to The Block, Ripple announced a toolkit for developers to build "proxy payment" applications on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), supporting AI agents to execute automated financial transactions.Ripple stated that AI agents are no longer a concept of the future but are actively participating in paying computational costs, settling invoices, and completing transactions without human intervention. As the application of AI agents expands, the market is accelerating the construction of payment infrastructure for machines, including wallets and stablecoin payment channels, enabling AI to autonomously complete service payments and asset transactions.This week, Robinhood also launched related plans, allowing users to try stock trading executed by AI agents, with plans to expand into the cryptocurrency space in the future; MetaMask also released a non-custodial wallet solution for AI agents.Ripple pointed out that traditional payment systems mainly serve human-initiated and approval processes, while AI agents require infrastructure that enables fast settlement, predictable outcomes, and no human approval. It emphasized that its new toolkit also supports payment capabilities based on the x402 protocol, allowing settlements using XRP and Ripple USD (RLUSD).Meanwhile, the IC3 team, composed of researchers from several universities, stated that although AI combined with blockchain can achieve automated trading, AI agents still heavily rely on humans and underlying infrastructure, lacking complete independence.

According to The Block, a joint letter initiated by Stand With Crypto, the Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and The Digital Chamber has been submitted to U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging a prompt full Senate vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (referred to as the CLARITY Act). More than 200 crypto companies, industry associations, and community organizations, including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, a16z, Circle, and Binance.US, participated in signing.The joint letter points out that the CLARITY Act will establish a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for the digital asset market, clarify the division of responsibilities among regulatory agencies, provide feasible registration pathways, and protect software developers' innovation while encouraging more digital asset businesses to return to the U.S. market. The signatories stated that the act would help keep innovation, jobs, investment, and market activities in the U.S., further solidifying the country's leading position in global digital asset innovation.It is understood that the CLARITY Act received bipartisan support from the Senate Banking Committee last month and passed the committee's review. Senator Cynthia Lummis subsequently stated that the next step for the act will be to enter the full Senate review stage.Additionally, 160 former national security and law enforcement officials had previously signed in support of the act, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt have also publicly called for advancing the legislative process. However, the issue of the Trump family's interests in relation to the crypto industry is still seen as one of the main obstacles facing the advancement of the act.

According to Cointelegraph, Ripple announced the official introduction of its USD-backed stablecoin RLUSD into the Turkish market through partnerships with three local institutions: BiLira, Bitexen, and Bitlo. Turkish institutional users will thus gain access to enterprise-level USD liquidity support.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple is leading a financing plan of at least $1 billion, intending to establish a publicly traded treasury company focused on holding XRP through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).The report states that this entity will use the raised funds to continuously increase its holdings of XRP, and Ripple is also expected to inject some of its own XRP holdings into the treasury. The terms of the related transaction are still under discussion, and the final plan may be adjusted.If successfully implemented, this will become the largest known XRP treasury plan to date. Market analysts believe that this move will test institutional investors' acceptance of the XRP treasury model and whether the digital asset treasury company model can expand from Bitcoin to other mainstream crypto assets.Currently, the market capitalization of XRP is approximately $138 billion, making it one of the top-ranking crypto assets globally. Since the beginning of this year, XRP has seen a cumulative increase of about 13%.It is worth noting that as the crypto market has recently experienced increased volatility, the stock prices of some digital asset treasury companies have come under pressure, and the market has begun to pay attention to whether similar models are facing demand saturation. However, if this plan is ultimately implemented, it may bring a new source of institutional buying for XRP and further strengthen its narrative in the capital markets.

The Digital Chamber, a cryptocurrency industry organization, responded to Senator Elizabeth Warren's concerns regarding the recent approval of national trust charters by the OCC, stating that her claims about cryptocurrency companies being "improperly approved" are unfounded.Previously, Warren wrote to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), stating that the recent approvals granted to digital asset companies such as Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity, BitGo, and Coinbase may violate the National Bank Act and have not adhered to the same regulatory standards as traditional banks.The Digital Chamber stated that the OCC has the authority to grant national trust charters to qualified institutions, and that these arrangements do not equate to a relaxation of regulation. The organization represents over 250 cryptocurrency-related entities and believes that these charters help to integrate digital asset services into a clearer federal regulatory framework.

According to Decrypt, the Digital Chamber has written to OCC Director Jonathan Gould, urging him to stick to the decision to grant national trust bank charters to crypto companies like Coinbase, Ripple, and Circle.Previously, Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the approval of these charters of violating the National Bank Act and posing a threat to the safety of the U.S. banking system. The Digital Chamber countered that Congress has effectively authorized the OCC to extend bank charters to stablecoin businesses through the GENIUS Act, and that the approved companies do not accept FDIC-insured deposits, thus not constituting traditional banking operations.

The cross-chain infrastructure platform Squid has completed a $6 million strategic financing round, led by North Island Ventures, with participation from Ripple, Dialectic, Borderless, and others.It is reported that Squid was initially incubated within the Axelar ecosystem and later developed into an independent platform. Since its launch in 2023, Squid claims to have processed over $6 billion in cross-chain transaction volume, covering more than 100 blockchains, with a total of over 4 million transactions and more than 1 million users. After this round of financing, Squid's total funding amount has reached $13.5 million. The company plans to use the new funds to launch new consumer-facing products, further simplifying the process for users to access, manage, and use crypto assets across chains.

On May 18, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) stating that the agency has improperly granted national trust charters to at least nine cryptocurrency companies since December 2025. Elizabeth Warren pointed out that the businesses these companies plan to engage in exceed the limited functions allowed by law for national trust banks, essentially attempting to circumvent the fundamental protections and obligations of banking through crypto banking. It is reported that the companies that have received or conditionally approved include Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity, BitGo, Coinbase, Stripe's subsidiary Bridge, and Crypto.com. The American Bankers Association urged the OCC in February to slow down the approval of related licenses, and Elizabeth Warren warned that this move would weaken consumer protections and pose regulatory arbitrage risks.

Data shows that the five spot XRP ETFs listed in the U.S. recorded a total net inflow of $25.8 million on Monday, setting a record for the largest single-day fund inflow since January 5, 2026, with a cumulative net inflow now reaching $1.35 billion. Among them, Franklin Templeton's XRPZ saw an inflow of $13.6 million, Bitwise XRP ETF saw an inflow of $7.6 million, and Grayscale GXRP saw an inflow of $4.6 million.Reports indicate that this round of fund inflows is related to several recent developments by Ripple. Ripple recently announced the completion of a $200 million debt financing to expand its institutional brokerage platform, Ripple Prime. Additionally, last week, Ripple, in collaboration with JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance, completed a tokenized settlement test for U.S. Treasury bonds on the XRP Ledger, with the redemption process taking less than 5 seconds. Meanwhile, Ripple also announced a "four-phase roadmap," planning to achieve a "quantum-resistant" upgrade for the XRP Ledger by 2028, including an emergency mechanism to recover funds through zero-knowledge proofs in extreme situations.Market analysis suggests that as the application of XRP increases in cross-border payments, institutional settlements, and tokenized assets, its ETF demand is gradually shifting from pure speculation to an infrastructure narrative. Despite the continuous inflow of ETF funds, the price of XRP has still fallen by about 39% over the past six months, with the current price around $1.47, significantly down from its historical high of about $3.65 in July 2025.

According to Businesswire, the NYSE-listed closed-end fund C1 Fund (CFND) announced its financial report for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2025, indicating that its private investment strategy in digital assets continues to expand, with the portfolio advancing in sync with liquidity events.As of now, its digital asset infrastructure investment portfolio includes Alchemy, Blockchain.com, Chainalysis, Consensys, Figment, Kraken, and Ripple, among others. This year, it has made additional investments exceeding $10.47 million in projects such as BitGo, Fireblocks, and Polymarket (Blockratize Inc.), and has completed additional allocations in holdings like Ripple.

According to Bloomberg, Ripple's main brokerage division has secured a maximum of $200 million in asset-backed debt financing from Neuberger Berman to expand its collateral financing services offered to institutional investors.The report states that the financing is provided by Neuberger Berman's specialized finance division, and Ripple can draw up to $200 million in phases based on the borrowing needs of institutional clients in the equity, fixed income, and cryptocurrency markets.

According to market news, since December 2025, more than 12 cryptocurrency and fintech companies have applied for or obtained national trust bank licenses from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), including Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, BitGo, as well as Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Digital Assets.Kraken's parent company Payward has also submitted an application to establish Payward National Trust Company, which will provide bank-grade cryptocurrency custody and trust services for institutional and individual clients. The OCC's auditor stated that new entrants into the federal banking sector are beneficial for consumers, the banking industry, and the economy, and the OCC will continue to provide pathways for traditional and innovative financial services. The national trust bank license allows companies to manage assets under a single federal regulation, reducing reliance on external banking partners. However, most companies are still in the conditional approval stage, with only Anchorage Digital Bank being the sole fully operational national trust bank.Another major unresolved issue is access to the Federal Reserve's payment infrastructure. Federal Reserve governors have indicated they are exploring ways to simplify account structures, but no formal framework has been established yet.