In XRP news from Swell 2026, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told the New York crowd on Wednesday, October 28, that the company “will never give up on XRP,” answering holders who fear Ripple’s business and the token are heading in separate directions.
The gap is real. Ripple bought back $750 million of its own shares in March at a $50 billion valuation, up from $40 billion in November, and now says it is on track for a $900 million annual revenue run rate. XRP, meanwhile, trades at $1.29. That is 30% below where it started the year, half its price a year ago and 64.6% under its $3.65 record from July 2025.
So is Ripple leaving XRP behind, will the new partnerships actually help the token, and what does the price chart say next?
WOW: Brad Garlinghouse just made it CRYSTAL CLEAR at @Ripple Swell: $XRP remains Ripple’s TOP PRIORITY!
Despite Ripple’s massive expansion into stablecoins, custody, payments and institutional finance, Brad declared:
“We only want to do things that are good for XRP.”
An… pic.twitter.com/CgAhbyqfXf
— ALLINCRYPTO (@RealAllinCrypto) October 29, 2026
Why Are Holders Worried Ripple and XRP Are Drifting Apart?
Because nearly every deal Ripple signed this month runs on its RLUSD stablecoin, and the money it earns goes to Ripple’s shareholders, not to XRP holders. The XRP news during this Swell week made the pattern hard to miss:
- Robinhood will settle institutional trades in RLUSD on the XRP Ledger.
- Coinbase listed RLUSD for U.S. clients on Wednesday.
- Moody’s rated RLUSD A2, investment grade.
- The OCC gave final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank, which will hold RLUSD’s reserves. XRP has no named role in it.
- DTCC: Ripple Prime sits in the Wall Street clearing house’s tokenization group of about 50 firms, but the first live trades in July ran on DTCC’s own network and Canton. The XRP Ledger wasn’t part of them.
Ripple’s own scorecard reads the same way. Its Swell release puts RLUSD at $2.6 billion, up more than 88% this year, and counts more than 1,700 institutional customers. XRP gets one line, as an asset Ripple uses to move money, with no figures attached.
Garlinghouse knows how this looks. He told the Swell stage that Ripple “will never give up on XRP” and called the token and RLUSD “very complementary.”
The structure behind the worry hasn’t changed, though. Owning XRP doesn’t make you a Ripple shareholder. When Ripple bought back stock in March, the $750 million went to investors and employees holding its private shares.
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Will XRP Benefit From Ripple’s New Deals?
Some, but much less directly than the headlines suggest. A bank settling RLUSD on the XRP Ledger pays its network fee in XRP, and that fee is burned, but the amounts are tiny.
The ledger’s own supply count shows how tiny. A check of the XRP Ledger on October 29 found that 153,989 XRP has been burned in fees since January 1, about $199,000 at today’s price. Over the past 30 days the figure was 27,573 XRP, about $35,600.
Compare that with Ripple’s escrow, which releases 1 billion XRP every month. The 1 billion unlocked on October 1 is still sitting in the two Ripple wallets that received it, 500 million each. Another 1 billion unlocks on Sunday, November 1. A month of fees burns less than 0.003% of a single month’s unlock.
The demand that matters for the price has to come from people holding XRP, and there the picture is mixed:
- Funds: U.S. spot XRP ETFs hold about $1.5 billion, but took in nothing on Tuesday after a $3.61 million outflow on Monday.
- Custody and collateral: BNY now holds XRP for institutional clients, and Ripple Prime accepts it as collateral. Neither has said how much.
- Treasury buyers: Evernorth, the Nasdaq-listed firm holding about 473 million XRP, signed an $80 million equity line on Monday and plans to use part of it to buy more XRP.
- Lending on the ledger: the vault and lending upgrades that would let institutions borrow against tokenized assets natively had 20 and 18 validator votes on October 21. Each needs 25, and there is no activation date.
That last item is the one XRP holders should follow. Payments and stablecoins use XRP as a fee. Lending would use it as collateral, with tokens locked up instead of burned in fractions of a cent.
EXPLORE: Ripple Leaves October’s 1 Billion XRP Unlock Untouched for 26 Days: Will Swell Week Change That?
XRP News and Price Analysis: Can XRP Hold $1.25?
It has held so far, but on the weekly chart XRP sits under the two moving averages that matter. It trades at $1.29, below its 200-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $1.3715 and its 50-week EMA at $1.4928. It has closed three weeks in a row under the 200-week line.
The 16-month chart shows a market that keeps selling rallies. XRP slid from its $3.65 record in July 2025 into a range between roughly $1.00 and $1.70 that has held since June. August’s one-week jump from $0.986 to $1.70 faded, and September’s push to $1.658 stalled near the 50-week EMA.
- Resistance: $1.3715, the 200-week EMA, then $1.4928, the 50-week EMA. Above those sits $1.6999, the August high.
- Support: $1.2468, the September 16 low, which held again at $1.2546 last week. Under that, $0.9862, the August 14 low and the bottom of 2026 so far.
| Path | What has to happen | Next stop |
|---|---|---|
| Push higher | A weekly close above $1.3715, the 200-week EMA | $1.4928, the 50-week EMA |
| Stall | Holding between $1.2468 and $1.3715 | More range trade under the 200-week EMA |
| Slip | A weekly close below $1.2468 | $0.9862, the August low |
Garlinghouse’s promise costs Ripple nothing, and holders know it. For XRP news to move the price, two things need watching after Swell: whether the 1 billion XRP unlocked on Sunday stays put, and whether the lending upgrade gets from 18 votes to 25.
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The post Ripple Is Worth $50Bn and Nearing $900M in Revenue But XRP Is Down 30% YTD: Is XRP News From Swell Enough to Close the Gap? appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
