XRP's Institutional Build-Out Presses On While ETF Demand Cools

Paxos adds XRP brokerage and custody as Grayscale taps Anchorage; weekly US spot XRP ETF inflows fell to $4.74M from $75.6M.

Institutional plumbing for XRP keeps expanding even as the token's price action sags. Paxos has wired the asset into its brokerage platform, letting partner firms offer buying, selling, custody and transfers of the token since yesterday — a move that widens regulated access for institutional clients without forcing them to build their own trading and custody stacks.

The infrastructure provider pointed to a network of more than 8.1 million wallets to justify the integration. Its client roster already includes names like Interactive Brokers and PayPal, giving those houses a ready path to offer XRP services.

Custody and settlement channels widen

Fund managers are broadening their own rails in parallel. Grayscale named Anchorage Digital Bank as an additional custodian for its spot XRP fund alongside Coinbase Custody, according to SEC filings earlier this week. The firm also now lets authorized participants deposit tokens directly for share creation, a change meant to smooth arbitrage and trading on NYSE Arca. Ripple, for its part, has taken on a role as a provider of swap financing for leveraged exchange-traded funds in the US financial sector, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Those steps land against a softer trading backdrop. XRP changed hands at $1.40, sitting 2.2% below its 50-day average of $1.43 and down 1.4% on the day. Year-to-date, the token has shed 24%.

Fund flows slam into reverse

Macro pressure has been the chief drag. Rising yields on ten-year US Treasuries and geopolitical tensions triggered broad liquidations across digital assets, and that caution shows up plainly in fund statistics. After a strong summer, demand for spot ETFs has faded sharply: weekly net inflows into US XRP funds came in at just $4.74 million, down from $75.6 million the prior week — a roughly 94% collapse.

The picture inside the ETF market was mixed. Bitwise's fund pulled in $10.55 million in net inflows on Tuesday, while Franklin Templeton's product bled $4.07 million the same day, leaving US spot ETFs with a combined net gain of $3.14 million. Assets under management across the products sit at about $1.7 billion, and institutions are using the calmer volatility to run strategic pilot projects.

Nasdaq listing slips a few days

A scheduling tweak added to the muted mood. The merger between Evernorth Holdings and Armada Acquisition Corp. II was pushed back slightly for administrative reasons. A mandatory SEC filing puts the closing on Friday, with the combined company's Nasdaq debut under the ticker XRPN set for October 12. Evernorth intends to hold roughly 473 million XRP in its treasury once the deal closes — a step market participants view as a potential catalyst for institutional holdings, now delayed by a matter of days.

Exchange data cuts both ways

On-chain figures paint a layered picture of positioning. CryptoQuant data shows large players withdrew about 1.38 billion XRP from Binance over a 30-day window, transfers often read as a sign that coins are leaving trading venues — though they don't prove whether owners will ultimately sell or hold. Separate CryptoQuant analysis for the same period logged 1.6 billion XRP flowing into Binance. Between September 26 and October 4, Binance's reserves fell by about 73.1 million XRP. On South Korea's Upbit, holdings dropped by roughly 31.6 million XRP from September 11 to October 5, bringing the combined decline across both exchanges to 104.7 million tokens.

Asia partnerships and a ledger upgrade

Institutional interest is also building in Asia. South Korean securities firm Meritz Securities struck a partnership with Ripple to explore uses of Ripple Custody and tokenization infrastructure for the domestic capital market, preparing for a legal framework for security tokens expected in South Korea by February 2027.

Back on the network itself, technical changes are in the works. If validator support holds, three protocol amendments could take effect on the XRP Ledger in the coming days, including PermissionDelegationV1_1 and BatchV1_1 for bundling transactions. Whether broader access through intermediaries like Paxos funnels fresh capital into the market quickly still hinges on the wider field steadying — but the groundwork laid by custodians and brokers in recent days is now in place.