Ripple SVP Says No Gap Between XRP Price and Real Demand

The argument that there is a gap between XRP price and real demand is, according to Ripple's own senior leadership, a misread of where the market actually stands. Markus Infanger, Senior Vice President at Ripple, told Japanese media this week that the spread between XRP's trading price and its on-the-ground utility is narrower than skeptics believe. His pitch was simple. The narrative is shifting from speculation to settlement, and the data, he said, is finally catching up with the marketing.

Why Ripple Says the XRP Price-Utility Gap Is a Myth

Infanger's framing was direct. "I don't necessarily see it as a gap," he said. In his view, XRP continues to pull in investment flows while its plumbing role inside payments and financial infrastructure expands quietly in the background. Price and utility, he argued, are not in conflict. They are two parts of the same trajectory.

That is, of course, exactly what you would expect a Ripple executive to say. But the numbers he leaned on are not boilerplate. Tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger have moved from roughly $100 million to $200 million a year ago to more than $2 billion today. That is a 10x jump in twelve months. Whether you buy the bull case or not, that is a real metric, not a vibe.

The implication Infanger wants the market to draw is this. If institutions are bringing collateral, treasuries, and tokenized assets onto XRPL at that pace, the so-called gap between $XRP the speculative ticker and XRP the settlement asset is closing on its own.

Tokenized Assets, ETFs and the Institutional Pipeline

The other prop holding up Infanger's argument is the arrival of regulated wrappers. The launch of XRP spot ETFs in the United States, he said, did more than just give traders another ticker to chase. It plugged XRP into the same allocation conversations that already include Bitcoin and Ether.

His core claim. Institutional participation via ETFs deepens liquidity, and deeper liquidity makes XRP more efficient as a settlement asset. The two functions feed each other. Speculators get a regulated product. Payment partners get a more reliable bridge currency. Both sides win, at least in theory.

There is a counter-read worth flagging. ETF inflows can also disconnect a token from its native chain entirely, parking supply in custodial wallets and contributing very little to on-chain throughput. Infanger did not engage with that risk in the interview. The bull case, as he frames it, assumes the two flywheels stay aligned.

I don't necessarily see it as a gap.

What Does RLUSD Mean for the XRP Thesis?

The stablecoin question is the one most retail holders have been asking since Ripple announced RLUSD. If Ripple has its own dollar-backed token, why hold XRP at all?

Infanger's answer was the closest thing in the interview to a direct rebuttal of bear-side talking points. "RLUSD is about increasing options and redundancy, not replacing XRP," he said. He framed RLUSD and XRP as complements, not substitutes. XRP keeps its job as the bridge asset and gas token on XRPL. RLUSD slots in next to it as a stable unit of account for institutions that do not want price exposure on the leg of a transaction.

The honest read is that this is a defensive answer to a real concern. Stablecoins have eaten into bridge-asset use cases across multiple chains over the last two years. Ripple's bet is that pairing the two assets on the same ledger creates more liquidity overall, not less for XRP. Whether that holds up in practice is the question every XRP holder should be modeling, not assuming.

Japan, SBI and the RLUSD Rollout

Geography matters here. Ripple is pushing RLUSD into Japan through a partnership with SBI Group and its crypto arm SBI VC Trade. Infanger said the rollout is moving from pilot to full-scale deployment, with regulatory coordination already underway.

Japan is not an accidental choice. Infanger called out the country's clear regulatory framework as a structural advantage, noting that Japanese authorities have treated digital assets as part of the financial system for years rather than as a fringe asset class. For a US-based firm still recovering from the long shadow of the SEC's lawsuit, a friendly home base in Asia is worth a lot.

The SBI relationship is also one of the deeper institutional ties in crypto. SBI has been a Ripple investor and partner for the better part of a decade. Pushing RLUSD through that channel is a low-friction way to get a regulated stablecoin in front of Japanese banks and corporates without starting from zero.

• Pilot to deployment: SBI VC Trade is the lead distribution partner for RLUSD in Japan.
• Regulatory edge: Japan's existing digital-asset framework removes much of the legal ambiguity Ripple faced at home.
• XRPL alignment: RLUSD lives on the XRP Ledger, meaning every RLUSD transaction still touches XRP infrastructure.

Speculation Versus Utility: A Transition, Not a Mismatch

Infanger's larger point is philosophical, and it is worth taking seriously even if you do not buy every Ripple talking point. He sees the current market as a transition, not a mismatch. XRP is already moving inside Ripple's payment flows and is being used in institutional products for collateral and liquidity management. The price chart, in his view, simply has not finished pricing that in.

The optimistic read. Utility-driven assets are gradually integrating into the global financial infrastructure, and as that happens, speculation becomes a smaller share of total demand. The cynical read. Every protocol team in crypto says exactly this when their token is underperforming the broader market.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. $2 billion in tokenized assets on XRPL is not nothing. Neither is a regulated XRP spot ETF market in the US. But neither metric guarantees the price chart cooperates on any specific timeline. What Infanger is really asking the market to do is be patient. That is a tough sell to a token holder base that has been waiting for years.