XRP's Plumbing Gets an Upgrade While the Tape Tells a Different Story

XRP slid 0.8% amid $1.1B in crypto-wide liquidations, even as the XRP Ledger activated new amendments and Paxos added the token.

Two forces are pulling XRP in opposite directions, and neither one is a regulatory headline. On one side, the XRP Ledger switched on a pair of long-anticipated amendments and Paxos widened the token's distribution reach. On the other, a market-wide cascade of forced selling dragged the price lower even as dedicated funds kept taking in money. The result is a asset whose infrastructure story and price story have temporarily decoupled.

A Billion-Dollar Liquidation Wave, Not an XRP Story

Thursday's slide in XRP coincided with roughly $1.1 billion in forced liquidations across the crypto market as a whole. That figure covers the entire sector — it is not a measure of XRP-specific unwind activity, and treating it as such would misread the move. The distinction matters: reported fund purchases and the mechanical dissolution of leveraged positions operate through entirely separate demand channels, so positive fund flows alone cannot be counted on to cushion the price in the short run.

The pressure has not fully abated. XRP was still nursing a daily decline of 0.8% in the latest session, suggesting the recent flow headlines have yet to translate into a sustained floor.

Fund Flows: Real, but Narrower Than They Look

Media reports flagged net inflows into U.S. spot XRP funds on Thursday, with the buying attributed to Franklin Templeton's XRPZ. That stands in contrast to a broadly weak market. Caution is warranted on the daily totals, however: tracking methodologies differ by fund coverage and reporting cut-off, and a weekly snapshot includes a broader crypto index fund alongside the spot vehicles — plus an acknowledged data gap in inflows for the Grayscale XRP Trust.

The defensible reading is therefore narrower than a blanket claim about institutional appetite. There were reported purchases through XRP funds, but no uniform dataset covering every daily and weekly tally. Investors should not conflate a single inflow report with a complete accounting of all capital movements.

Evernorth's Nasdaq Listing Adds Another Data Point

Further evidence of institutional engagement around XRP comes from Evernorth, which completed its merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II on Friday. At closing, the company held approximately 473 million XRP and had raised roughly $300 million in gross cash proceeds before transaction costs.

This is a corporate event, distinct from trading in the token itself. Evernorth's common stock is slated to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN on October 12. That is neither an XRP ETF approval nor a new exchange listing for the token.

The Ledger Turns On New Capabilities

On the technical front, the XRP Ledger activated the BatchV1_1 amendment on Friday, letting users bundle multiple transactions into a single operation. The feature is no longer merely announced — it is live on the network. Alongside it, fixBatchV1_2 was also enabled the same day, centered on the ability to execute transactions jointly.

A day earlier, the ledger had unlocked PermissionDelegationV1_1, which allows accounts to delegate specific transaction permissions without handing over their primary keys. The two changes address different jobs: one consolidates operations, the other governs the hand-off of selected permissions. For investors, the distinction is crucial — technical features describe what users can do on the network. Whether they actually lean on those capabilities more heavily is a separate question, and activation by itself does not prove rising demand for XRP.

Paxos Opens a New Distribution Channel

Wednesday brought a different kind of expansion: Paxos added XRP to its Crypto Brokerage platform, enabling partner firms to offer their customers buying and selling, custody, deposits and withdrawals. Unlike the network amendments, this step directly touches XRP's availability to partner businesses, and its scope is notable — it spans not just trading but also custody and transfers, opening additional use cases without yet quantifying how much they will actually be used.

Separately, Meritz Securities and Ripple agreed on Wednesday to a strategic collaboration exploring custody and tokenization infrastructure for South Korea's capital markets. The announcement named neither a role for XRP nor a product launch date.

Flows Cool While the Build-Out Continues

The prior week had seen $75.6 million in inflows. Capital is still moving into these products, then — just considerably less than before. Two developments now sit side by side: network functionality and access routes are widening, while disclosed fund inflows have tapered off. The usability progress is concrete; a correspondingly stronger investment bid cannot be assumed from it.

For XRP, the tension between demand channels and selling pressure remains the defining feature. Fund flows and corporate holdings document engagement with the XRP ecosystem. What they do not establish is that this engagement can offset market-wide liquidations in the near term.