XRP's Institutional Push Meets Washington Gridlock
Published on 11/05/2026 at 15:12 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Ripple's twin campaigns — one to embed XRP in bank-grade plumbing, the other to shape US crypto law — are advancing on separate clocks, and neither is delivering the demand signal XRP holders might hope for.
On the infrastructure side, the company has stacked up a series of wins. Ripple secured final OCC approval for a trust bank on October 26, and BNY Mellon has been safeguarding XRP and RLUSD since October while also serving as reserve custodian for the stablecoin. Standard Chartered, meanwhile, began offering RLUSD custody in Dubai in October and is weighing the stablecoin as trading collateral.
Ripple Prime now accepts XRP alongside RLUSD, US Treasuries and gold as collateral, according to media reports. Analyst Dark Defender drew a sharp line between the token and stablecoins: the latter are liabilities of an issuer, whereas XRP carries no claim against any issuer or reserve. That distinction describes the structure of the asset — it does not, on its own, demonstrate rising demand or say anything about where the price goes next. Nor does collateral eligibility reveal how much institutional clients will actually use the token.
Dark Defender expects regulated custody to ease institutional use of the XRP Ledger, while XRPL validator Vet stresses the network's multi-asset character. The two points sit together awkwardly for bulls: activity on the ledger does not automatically translate into usage of XRP itself.
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Aviva Investors offers a case in point. The firm tokenized a share class of its Sterling Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger on October 26; the wider fund manages roughly GBP 22 billion, a figure that describes the entire fund, not the tokenized slice. Custody arrangements, collateral status and tokenized fund units each open a different institutional doorway. A durable demand effect for XRP requires market participants to deploy the token itself — not merely to move other assets across the same rails.
The policy track looks rougher. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse is sticking to his goal of clear US crypto rules after the Democratic election win, pushing back on the notion that the outcome is broadly bad for the industry. In a post on X, he pointed to crypto-friendly lawmakers elected on both sides of the aisle and noted that more than 67 million Americans use cryptocurrencies — a constituency, he argued, that will not simply vanish. A clear legal framework for digital assets remains the objective for the new Congress.
Ripple CLO Stuart Alderoty highlighted wins by candidates backed by the crypto action committee Fairshake and cited early readings from Stand With Crypto. Those ratings are neither official nor complete, so they offer a political mood gauge rather than proof of future legislative majorities. Ripple intends to keep funding its political engagement and education efforts through groups such as the National Cryptocurrency Association — a clear bet on cross-party alliances rather than a retreat from Washington.
TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg takes a far dimmer view. He expects market-structure legislation such as the CLARITY Act to make little headway over the next two years, with possible probes into Trump's crypto dealings further complicating a industry-friendly bill. The CLARITY Act failed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate on September 15 — not a final vote on the legislation. Absent a revival, the draft lapses on January 3, 2027, and an expert surveyed by CNBC called passage in the remaining session unlikely.
The gap between Garlinghouse and Seiberg is less about goals than about expectations for achieving them. The target framework is not law. Yet a stalled Congress does not idle the regulators: Seiberg expects continued activity from the SEC and CFTC regardless of Capitol Hill.
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House Democrats, according to a Bitcoin Magazine report, are weighing their own market-structure draft that could hand the SEC more authority and the CFTC less, alongside ethics rules for crypto dealings by Trump and other officials. No official text exists yet. For XRP, the upshot is regulatory uncertainty rather than any concrete tightening — the debate concerns jurisdiction and oversight of the crypto market, and nothing in the current proposals yields a specific new rule for the token.
Garlinghouse's optimism is therefore a political stance, not a promise of imminent breakthrough. The test is whether Ripple and its peers can convert cross-party contacts into durable majorities. Until then, the commitment to clear rules faces substantial doubt over timing — and the build-out of custody and settlement still has to prove it generates genuine use of XRP.
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