
$GRVT As Ripple continues to improve its services to better serve institutions across the globe, it has just announced a major development that has put its native stablecoin, $RLUSD, in the spotlight.
In a recent announcement shared today, the San Francisco blockchain firm has reportedly launched round-the-clock stock trading through its prime brokerage platform, Ripple Prime.
$RLUSD-backed loans are live
Following the development, Ripple Prime will begin to allow institutional clients to trade stocks 24/7 while using Ripple USD ($RLUSD) as collateral.
With this move, institutional investors will now have access to continuous trading through Ripple Prime with the opportunity to use $RLUSD as collateral for their positions.
While the move positions $RLUSD for broader adoption, it also expands its potential uses beyond payments and treasury operations.
As such, the Ripple stablecoin will serve a more active role in institutional trading and financing as it aims to help institutions manage trading positions and move capital more efficiently without relying entirely on traditional banking.
Ripple's stock trading may face limited liquidity
While the move has garnered interest across the crypto community, there are speculations about certain challenges that could limit institutions from fully exploring the 24/7 trading system.
Speculators have highlighted that liquidity in these emerging 24/7 stock markets remains limited. As such, it becomes difficult for institutions to execute large trades without significantly affecting prices.
This could become a challenge for Ripple Prime's new product, as institutional investors would need sufficient buyers and sellers to execute large orders efficiently, regardless of the time of day.

$GRVT Protocol Architecture Drives Core Demand
The convergence of Ripple Labs’ favorable 2023 court decision and the broader regulatory tailwinds of a pro-crypto Trump administration fueled a powerful bull run, propelling $XRP to an all-time high in mid-2025. However, retail and institutional interest has since tapered off, standing in sharp contrast to Ripple’s aggressive pursuit of enterprise partnerships aimed at deepening $XRP’s cross-border payments ecosystem.
In recent months, $XRP experienced a marked pullback, breaching the $1 support level in August this year. Despite this price stagnation, developer and institutional engagement across the $XRP Ledger remains resilient. Furthermore, continued adoption by major financial conglomerates, such as Japan’s SBI Group, underscores the long-term staying power of the protocol.
Addressing how this growing enterprise footprint translates into structural demand for $XRP, Odelia Torteman, head of digital assets at XRPL Commons, highlighted the ledger’s native architecture. She noted that features such as multi-purpose tokens, permissioned domains, and a permissioned decentralized exchange (DEX) support institutional requirements directly onchain, with $XRP playing a core functional role.
Accounts, and the objects they own on the ledger, such as trust lines, offers or escrows, require an $XRP reserve. As the number of accounts and assets grows, so does the amount of $XRP held for this purpose,” Torteman told Bitcoin.com News, adding that $XRP also serves as a key bridge asset for liquidity across DEX routing and automated market maker pools.
Expanding on how emerging applications could generate durable demand, Torteman emphasized the ledger’s trajectory toward becoming a 24/7 compliance-grade settlement infrastructure for digital finance. As traditional finance and digital assets converge into “institutional DeFi,” she cited real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and stablecoin issuance as key drivers. The $XRP Ledger ranks among the top three chains for RWAs, and Ripple’s stablecoin, $RLUSD, surpassed $2 billion in market capitalization, with over half hosted on the XRPL.
“The next stage is credit on chain,” Torteman explained, noting that pending protocol activations like the Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vaults will enable underwritten, fixed-term credit models familiar to institutional allocators. “This is how a tokenised treasury becomes collateral, collateral becomes credit, and credit becomes structured yield, all on the same rail.”
Expanding Ecosystem via Cross-Chain Interoperability
Meanwhile, beyond native protocol expansion, cross-chain connectivity is emerging as another catalyst for ecosystem growth. Torteman highlighted the integration of the $XRP Ledger into LOBSTR, an established wallet in the Stellar ecosystem, connecting two major payment-focused networks.
With the first phase live on iOS and Android, users can manage XRPL accounts, trade tokens on the native DEX, swap $XRP across chains, and access fiat on-ramps for $RLUSD. Torteman noted that value is actively moving between the two ecosystems, laying the foundation for the second phase, which will expand DeFi integrations and asset flows.
To translate these onchain capabilities into viable commercial products, XRPL Commons is targeting practical developer execution at its upcoming New York hackathon. Organized alongside industry partners including AWS, Mastercard, Ledger, and Quicknode, the event focuses on four core tracks, namely agentic finance, lending and borrowing, native protocol development, and an open innovation track.
Addressing the challenge of turning hackathon prototypes into lasting ventures, Torteman noted that top teams will receive technical mentorship, partner introductions, and access to dedicated startup programs. She highlighted that six teams from a previous buildathon in Paris have already launched businesses and joined XRPL startup pipelines.

$GRVT According to David Schwartz, the chief architect of the XRP Ledger and Ripple’s CTO Emeritus, most people who hold or follow XRP do not know what its underlying network was built to do.
Schwartz spoke at Nasdaq during the celebration of Evernorth’s public listing. He said the most common misunderstanding is about where the XRP Ledger sits among the major blockchains. In his view, it has more functionality than Bitcoin but less than Ethereum or Solana, and that middle position is deliberate.
The Misconception Schwartz Wants To Correct
Schwartz described the ledger as built for a narrow set of financial tasks rather than general-purpose computing. Those tasks include:
Tokenization of real-world assets
Payments and liquidity
Lending
Stablecoins
He said this focus makes the network strong for some use cases and a poor fit for others. It does not support every application a developer might write. Instead, the ledger comes with what he called curated financial primitives, designed to meet the standards financial institutions expect.
Three Reasons Institutions Pick The XRP Ledger
Asked why a bank or financial firm should build on the network, Schwartz gave three reasons:
It is fast, cheap and reliable.
It is decentralized, so no single party can turn the system against its users.
It comes connected to ready-made financial tools.
RLUSD And A Multi-Chain Future
Schwartz said XRP Ledger supporters should not expect a single-chain outcome. Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin runs on the XRP Ledger, but he said it also needs to be on other networks to reach more users and deeper liquidity.
He explained the goal in personal terms. People leave money idle in bank accounts, he said, because moving it somewhere it can earn a return takes effort. He wants the industry to reach a point where users think only about what their money is doing, not where it sits.
AI Agents Could Turn Blockchains Into Settlement Layers
On artificial intelligence, Schwartz said high-volume payments between AI agents may run on fast, low-cost payment channels, with final settlement on a blockchain. He expects some countries to become net buyers of AI services and others net sellers. Settling those imbalances, he said, will require a neutral settlement network. He did not say that network would be the XRP Ledger.
Ripple’s 2027 Focus
Looking ahead to 2027, Schwartz pointed to Ripple’s acquisitions of GTreasury and Hidden Road. He said Ripple is combining them into one business. It plans to cross-sell products to clients who already move trillions of dollars through systems that do not touch crypto.
Schwartz said the Evernorth listing shows crypto connecting with traditional finance. It gives investors a way to hold XRP through retirement accounts and on corporate balance sheets.

$GRVT $XRP payments on X are drawing attention after Cross River Bank, the banking infrastructure provider for X Money, partnered with Ripple to integrate its US dollar-backed stablecoin $RLUSD into its core banking platform, with support for transactions on the $XRP Ledger.
The October 2026 announcement allows Cross River to offer $RLUSD as an additional payment option alongside traditional banking services. The integration aims to help fintech companies process cross-border payments, manage treasury transfers and settle transactions around the clock.
The businesses will be able to access $RLUSD through a single application programming interface (API), without having to build their own blockchain infrastructure. The integration will also allow fintech companies to move between US dollars and $RLUSD, settle payments 24/7 and access wire transfers and real-time payment services through one banking platform.
Transactions on the $XRP Ledger typically settle within three to five seconds, with low transaction fees. Cross River said the integration combines its regulated banking infrastructure with blockchain-based payments, giving businesses more flexibility in moving money.
$RLUSD has a reported market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion, with over $1 billion issued on the $XRP Ledger. The stablecoin is designed to maintain a value equivalent to one US dollar and can support payments, trading and institutional transactions.
Also Read : Ripple ($XRP) Price Prediction 2026, 2027-2030: Will $XRP Reach $5?
Will X Money Use $XRP or $RLUSD?
The partnership has drawn attention because Cross River Bank also provides banking infrastructure for X Money, the payments service associated with Elon Musk’s X platform. This has led to speculation that X Money could eventually use Ripple’s payment technology.
However, the announcement does not confirm any integration between X Money and Ripple, $RLUSD or the $XRP Ledger. The confirmed developments are Cross River Bank’s relationship with X Money and its separate agreement with Ripple.
Therefore, $XRP payments on X remain unconfirmed. Whether X Money will adopt $RLUSD or the $XRP Ledger has not been established by either company.
For now, the partnership expands Cross River’s payment capabilities, but any direct connection to X Money would require a separate confirmation.