XRP's Split Screen: Grayscale's 26% Nod vs. a Hawkish Fed

Grayscale's new Digital Assets Next Gen portfolio holds no Bitcoin, giving XRP a 26.11% weight as RLUSD tops $1 billion in growth this year.

XRP holders woke up to a market pulling in two directions on Monday. The token was fetching $1.40 in morning trade, up 4.3% on the day, after asset manager Grayscale handed it a heavyweight role in a freshly launched model portfolio. Yet the broader mood stayed cautious, with the same asset changing hands at $1.42 in a separate reading that showed a 2.7% decline — a reminder of how quickly sentiment has been swinging.

Grayscale Bets Big on XRP

The headline driver came from Grayscale, which on Monday unveiled a new model portfolio dubbed Digital Assets Next Gen. The basket is notable for what it leaves out: there is no Bitcoin allocation at all. Instead, Ether anchors the product with a 42.34% weighting, XRP sits second at 26.11%, and Solana rounds out the top three with 21.09%.

That 26.11% slice is more than a cosmetic allocation. It plants the token firmly inside regulated portfolio structures built for large institutions, giving pension funds and wealth managers a familiar wrapper through which to gain exposure.

The move extends a run of capital flowing in from traditional finance. Over the past 30 days, XRP has climbed roughly 40%, with spot XRP ETFs drawing steady money — $153.55 million poured into such products during a single month in the second half of August alone.

RLUSD's Billion-Dollar Year

Ripple's own stablecoin has been quietly writing its own story. RLUSD has added just over $1.07 billion in market capitalization since the start of the year, making it one of 2026's fastest-expanding stablecoins. It now trails only Tether's USDT and Anchorage's business-focused USDGO on that growth leaderboard.

Supply management has accompanied the expansion. On September 10, Ripple confirmed the permanent destruction of 15 million RLUSD tokens, worth about $15 million, sent to an Ethereum null address. The burn keeps liquidity flowing through the wider XRP Ledger ecosystem, where the technical plumbing is also being retuned.

Ledger Passes an Unplanned Stress Test

The network itself offered a timely proof of resilience. On Saturday, the XRP Ledger processed a record batch of 2,768 transactions in just 3.8 seconds, clearing the unplanned stress test without delays. A technical upgrade had already gone live on September 11, bringing adjustments to Single Asset Vaults, the lending protocol, and automated market makers.

Institutional plumbing is thickening too. A Charles Schwab money market fund reported holdings of nearly $4.8 million in XRP ETF shares on September 9, parked as repo collateral. A day later, US XRP ETFs logged $5.14 million in net inflows, lifting cumulative inflows to roughly $1.70 billion.

Washington and the Fed Loom Large

Two macro forces are capping the upside. In Washington, the Senate is preparing a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act that will require a 60-vote threshold — a regulatory milestone the crypto sector continues to watch closely.

On the monetary side, producer prices rose 5.4% year over year, stoking expectations of a firmer Federal Reserve stance. With the central bank's rate decision approaching, traders are trimming risk, and profit-taking has added to the drag. Even so, XRP's 30-day gain stands at 42%, and its growing footprint in regulated products suggests the institutional base is being built regardless of the day-to-day tape.