Ripple announced over $16 trillion in transactions during 2025, driven by partnerships with major financial institutions including BNY, Robinhood, Coinbase, and DriveWealth. Yet buying XRP tokens does not grant ownership in Ripple or a share of its profits.
The disconnect exists because XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, while Ripple operates as a separate financial software and services company. Ripple can generate substantial revenue without passing earnings to token holders, who hold no claim on company revenues.
Multiple Products, Not All Requiring XRP
Ripple sells financial software, digital asset custody services, and cash-management tools alongside XRP. The company also offers RLUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin designed to maintain a value of one US dollar, backed by reserves of dollars and short-term US government securities.
Recent partnerships demonstrate this diversification. Robinhood's agreement with Ripple focused primarily on RLUSD for institutional settlement and cash-management integration, not XRP adoption. Coinbase added RLUSD across its retail and institutional platforms, allowing customers to use the stablecoin on multiple blockchains without transacting on the XRP Ledger. BNY announced custody support for both XRP and RLUSD but did not disclose client XRP balances.
In October 2026, Ripple received final approval for a national trust bank, expanding its ability to offer institutions digital asset custody and RLUSD reserve management without requiring those customers to purchase XRP.
Minimal Transaction Fees, Modest Token Economics
XRP's transaction fees are extremely small. At the XRP Ledger's documented minimum fee of 10 drops (0.00001 XRP) per transaction, one million standard transactions would consume just 10 XRP. These fees are permanently destroyed rather than paid to token holders or the company.
Accounts require XRP reserves to operate on the ledger, currently starting at 1 XRP per account with additional requirements for maintaining records. However, these reserve amounts are not calculated as a percentage of payment volume and can be adjusted by network validators.
When XRP functions as a bridge asset in cross-currency payments, providers can reuse the same tokens across multiple transactions rather than holding inventory equivalent to total transaction volume. Growing payment activity may eventually require larger XRP balances depending on trading conditions and inventory turnover, but this relationship is not automatic or straightforward.
Limited Data on Actual XRP Usage
The recent partnership announcements do not disclose how much payment volume actually routes through XRP or how much of the stablecoin activity occurs on the XRP Ledger versus other blockchains. Ripple's $900 million revenue target reflects growth across all its products and acquired businesses, not XRP-specific metrics.
SBI Remit provides one documented example of XRP-based remittance services in Southeast Asia, though current volumes and growth figures remain undisclosed. Without transparency on XRP routing volumes and the inventory levels required to support them, token holders cannot reliably assess whether growing payment activity translates to increased token demand.
Token Price Movement Versus Company Growth
In late October 2026, XRP rose from $1.29 to $1.32 following a series of partnership announcements—a 2.3% gain. However, this left the token approximately 11% below its September close. Over the same September-to-October period, Bitcoin declined 2.7% and Ethereum fell 12.2%, placing XRP's performance within the range of major cryptocurrencies rather than demonstrating exceptional weakness or strength relative to market conditions.
XRP's circulating supply stands at approximately 63.35 billion tokens against a maximum supply of 100 billion. The Bitwise XRP ETF held about 413.8 million XRP as of October 27, 2026, a 215% increase from approximately 131.2 million at year-end 2025, though this measure reflects both market purchases and tokens contributed by shareholders.
XRP holders continue to rely on assessments of future token demand rather than receiving contractual claims on Ripple's current revenues or profits from its expanding product suite.
