XRP Stuck Near $1.27 Despite Ripple Wins as RLUSD Growth Favors Ethereum Over XRP Ledger

XRP is trading near $1.27 despite a string of significant milestones for Ripple, including winning a national trust bank charter, launching new partnerships, and high-profile promotion at the Ripple Swell conference. Billy Trajcevski, Head of Strategic Partnerships at UpTrade, attributes the price stagnation to Ripple's corporate structure, arguing that the company's shareholders are prioritized over XRP token holders.

At Swell, CEO Brad Garlinghouse pushed back on concerns that Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin is competing with XRP, calling XRP the company's "north star" and insisting RLUSD competes with other stablecoins rather than with its own token. Garlinghouse said he wants RLUSD use cases to run on the XRP Ledger and characterized the stablecoin as "good for XRP."

However, on-chain data tells a different story. Despite Garlinghouse's stated preference for the XRP Ledger, DefiLlama data shows roughly two-thirds of RLUSD's $2.6 billion supply sits on Ethereum. Meanwhile, RLUSD supply on the XRP Ledger has dropped more than 30%, even as XRP wallets show rising whale accumulation.