XRP Ledger activity jumps 191% as payment volume falls 89%

XRP Ledger transactions per ledger rose 191% in the week through Aug. 28, even as payment volume fell 89%, according to on-chain data. The activity spike points to non-payment uses — tokenization, DeFi, and meme-token trading — rather than the cross-border settlement flows that built XRP's original narrative.

"The surge is concentrated in non-payment activity," Darkfost, an analyst at CryptoQuant, said, noting that Binance sell volume hit $96 million on Aug. 27, the strongest single-day figure of the year. The gap between ledger usage and settlement volume has widened as institutional money reaches the token through a separate channel.

Spot XRP ETFs recorded $110.49 million in net inflows for the week, the strongest showing since the products launched, lifting cumulative inflows to $1.66 billion with $1.44 billion in assets under management. Wallets holding one million to ten million XRP added 380 million tokens, raising aggregate whale holdings to 16.36 billion, while Goldman Sachs disclosed an $86.5 million position across five spot XRP ETFs.

Two dates now frame the near-term path. The fixCleanup3_3_0 amendment could activate on the XRP Ledger mainnet as early as Sept. 11, and the US Senate holds a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15, with passage odds on prediction markets having fallen from 58 percent to below 20 percent.

Record ETF Demand Meets a Stubborn Spot Market

XRP trades at $1.39, up 28 percent on the month but down 5 percent on the week and 24 percent year-to-date. The token climbed from $0.988 to an interim high near $1.698 — a 71.8 percent surge — before giving back about a fifth of those gains. It now sits above a support zone between $1.35 and $1.38 where roughly 3.2 billion XRP changed hands, with resistance at $1.60, $1.68, $1.86 and $2.19.

The pullback followed a hawkish speech by Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh at the Jackson Hole symposium, which traders read as a signal that a September rate cut is far from guaranteed. PCE inflation remains elevated at 3.7 percent. Exchanges reported more than $105 million in liquidations of leveraged futures positions within a single hour, with longs absorbing most of the damage. Open interest in XRP futures on the CME jumped nearly 40 percent within a week, while leveraged funds nearly doubled their net short position to roughly 115.7 million XRP.

Ripple's Wall Street Bridge Takes Shape

Ripple Prime launched a delta-one desk on Thursday, allowing institutional clients to execute total-return swaps on US-listed equities, indices and digital assets. The unit operates with more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital, backed by a $275 million senior notes placement and a $200 million credit facility from Neuberger Specialty Finance. XRP has served as collateral in the prime business since March.

The stablecoin ecosystem is expanding in parallel. RLUSD, issued on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, has surpassed $2 billion in total supply, with 44 percent circulating on the XRP Ledger and 56 percent on Ethereum. Evernorth, which received SEC approval for its S-4 registration, plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN, subject to a shareholder vote on Sept. 30; the company reports holding about 473 million XRP.

The divergence between on-chain usage and settlement volume, and between ETF inflows and spot price, raises a central question for XRP holders: whether institutional accumulation eventually breaks the decoupling from spot performance. For now, the token runs on two parallel tracks — one institutional, one retail — that rarely intersect, with the Sept. 11 ledger activation and Sept. 15 Senate vote likely to determine which track wins out.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.