XRP’s Institutional Story Gains Steam with Bank Accumulation and Tokenized Treasuries, Yet Price Remains Stuck

Whale holdings hit 8-year high and JPMorgan pilots XRP Ledger, but XRP remains below key moving average with technical resistance at $1.55 and 1 billion escrow unlock looming.

The gap between XRP’s on-chain activity and its market price has seldom been wider. While Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, has ramped up its crypto holdings to $235 million in the first quarter, and whales now command 68.5% of the circulating supply — the highest share in eight years — the token itself is struggling to break free from technical resistance. At $1.48, XRP has shed about 21% year-to-date, despite a 7% weekly gain, and remains pinned below the 200-day moving average at $1.74.

Intesa Sanpaolo’s exposure is partly channeled through the Grayscale XRP Trust, where the bank holds roughly $18 million in shares. It also uses Ripple Custody to manage its digital assets. Large holders, meanwhile, are pulling tokens off exchanges. More than 400 million XRP were withdrawn from Binance alone, tightening the available supply and feeding a narrative of accumulation that stands in sharp contrast to the price action.

Exchange-traded products are also drawing capital. Mid-May saw the strongest weekly inflow of the year for XRP spot ETFs, at just over $60 million — a performance that outpaced Bitcoin ETFs in the same period. On a single day, net inflows hit $25.8 million, the highest daily figure since early January. Cumulative inflows have now reached $1.35 billion. Wall Street is taking notice: Goldman Sachs reportedly holds about $153 million in XRP-linked products.

A more direct vote of confidence comes from the infrastructure side. JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance recently completed a cross-border pilot involving the redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund. The asset leg settled on the XRP Ledger in under five seconds, compared with the one to three business days typical of correspondent banking. Ondo’s OUSG — a tokenized fund holding $250 million in short-term Treasuries with a 100-day average maturity and a 4.8% yield — was at the centre. The fund’s total assets stand at $680 million, with about 2.8 million OUSG tokens on the XRP Ledger and monthly transfer volumes of roughly $101 million. The pilot marked the first time JPMorgan’s private blockchain system was connected to a public layer-1 chain.

Ripple is also strengthening its own institutional platform. A $200 million credit facility from funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance — part of Neuberger Berman, which oversees $570 billion — will fuel the expansion of Ripple Prime. Since the platform’s acquisition in 2025, its revenue has tripled year-over-year. The facility is meant to deepen Ripple’s ability to serve funds, market makers, and trading desks, building a case for using XRP for liquidity, RLUSD for settlement, and the XRP Ledger for on-chain execution.

Technical hurdles remain stubborn. A heavy resistance wall sits near $1.55, and options markets assign little probability to a quick move above $2. To the downside, $1.38 provides support. Adding to the near-term uncertainty, Ripple’s escrow account will unlock 1 billion XRP on June 1. Historically, large portions of those unlocks are re-locked into new contracts, but any deviation could add selling pressure.

Beyond the immediate price gyrations, Ripple is laying groundwork for longer-term resilience. A quantum-resistance roadmap extends to 2028, with real-world testing of post-quantum cryptography under XRPL load profiles scheduled for the first half of 2026, followed by integration of selected signature schemes on the devnet in the second half. The ledger already allows key rotation at the account level without moving funds, a structural advantage. On the DeFi front, Ripple is developing a native lending protocol that will offer fixed-rate loans and isolated vaults, with terms ranging from 30 to 180 days and agreements recorded directly via signed on-chain entries.

For now, XRP has lifted off its January low of $1.22 but remains hostage to the long-term trend line at $1.74. The institutional narrative is undeniably thickening — but until pilots become recurring usage and the supply overhang is absorbed, the chart may continue to tell a different story.