A senior executive from Asia's EverNorth Asia, Sagar Shah, has made a powerful institutional case for XRP, highlighting its potential to disrupt the "fundamentally broken" cross-border payments market. Shah, the firm's Chief Business Officer, stated, "I see XRP as being structural to finance," pointing to a market worth over $150 trillion per year where existing systems charge fees as high as 6% per transfer.
Shah cited a wave of regulatory clarity as a key catalyst, including the SEC's decision in the U.S., MiCA in Europe, and progressive frameworks in Japan and Asia, which is removing legal risk barriers for institutional adoption. He revealed that $1 billion has flowed into XRP ETFs since the second half of 2025, with Goldman Sachs alone disclosing holdings of $150 million in XRP ETFs at the end of that year.
Concurrently, Ripple Labs is executing a multi-pronged global expansion strategy to boost XRP adoption. Company executives, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse, recently visited offices in Dublin, London, Singapore, and Sydney to unify teams and craft a single global strategy. Ripple announced the integration of its payment system with global platform i-payout, enabling real-time payouts to the U.S. and Canada, reducing transaction times from days to seconds.
In a major structural move, Ripple has filed for a banking license, which, if approved, would allow it to hold its own supply of roughly 40 billion XRP tokens as a regulated institution. The company also announced a $750 million share buyback, valuing the firm at $50 billion.
For 2026, Ripple's focus areas are custody, on-demand liquidity, and treasury management, described as a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity. Supporting data shows the total market value of XRP reached $90 billion, XRP ETFs have attracted $1.26 billion in inflows, and Ripple has signed over 300 deals with traditional financial institutions in the past five years.
