XRP (XRP -0.26%) is often pigeonholed as a somewhere between a meme coin and a generic payment rail on the blockchain, but the ledger's real ambitions are far quieter, and far greater. In short, one of its biggest opportunities in the coming years is turning traditional securities and assets into blockchain tokens that institutions can hold around the clock and easily swap with each other. That niche, once dismissed as futuristic, is starting to look like the next big thing since the invention of the bond market, as it would disrupt the traditional financial sector while energizing the crypto sector with a critical role in the global flow of assets.
Investors who plant a flag on the right chain early enough could end up owning the digital ground floor of a multitrillion-dollar asset buildout. And there's reason to believe that XRP might be that chain, so let's take a look.
XRP just won a critical partner
A key catalyst for XRP hit on June 11 when a heavyweight of the real world asset (RWA) tokenization universe, Ondo Finance (ONDO -1.37%), set up shop on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Financial institutions got an immediate way to park U.S. Treasuries on the chain, and investors got a preview of how much capital could follow such a move.
In a nutshell, Ondo put its flagship $693 million Short-Term U.S. Government Treasuries fund on the XRP Ledger. Qualified investors can now mint and redeem those Treasuries 24/7 using Ripple's forthcoming stablecoin, eliminating the two-day settlement lag that still haunts conventional brokerages. Ripple is the business that issues XRP, and which is responsible for its development.
Treasuries are an all-important asset for institutional investors (who are XRP's target users) because they're highly liquid, offer a yield, and are considered very safe assets. Pretty much all big banks and funds hold them in vast quantities, so if a blockchain can't support them, it's probably not one that these users are going to want to use.
So why did Ondo pick XRP for its assets rather than stick with its longtime home, Ethereum? The answer is almost certainly compliance plumbing. Identity credentials and asset-freeze tools live at protocol level on XRP, with more plans to expand similar capabilities, so asset issuers can enforce know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) rules without stitching together outside widgets like they would need to on Ethereum. And that turnkey model matters to chief financial officers and other financial leaders whose careers might end if they misfile a single form.
Image source: Getty Images.
Presently, XRP's bet to increase its integration with asset tokenizers appears to be working. As of this week the ledger hosts about $157 million in tokenized real-world assets, up 35% in a month.
That is still tiny compared with Ethereum's footprint of $7.5 billion, but it shows institutions are willing to follow practical rails rather than hype. If more funds emulate Ondo's lead and tokenize assets like U.S. debt, money market funds, or even mortgage pools, the ledger would gain a powerful value flywheel, as every new asset would make the chain stickier for the next one and even more appealing to its target audience.
Of course, the partnership is not a silver bullet. Competition is fierce, and Ethereum's decentralized finance (DeFi) sprawl still dwarfs everything else. But the playbook here is different. XRP is courting clients who value regulatory certainty over open-source experimentation. For investors, that strategic clarity lowers the odds of a permanent tech fork or regime change derailing the story.
There could be an entire decade of upside here
The importance of winning in asset tokenization could be enormous for XRP. Boston Consulting Group pegs the potential RWA market at roughly $16 trillion by 2030.
Today's on-chain total is barely double-digit billions, so the runway is very long here -- perfectly long enough for investors with a 10-year time horizon for investments. If XRP captured even 1% of BCG's projection, about $160 billion of assets would anchor to the ledger, which is more than 1,000 times its current RWA base. Coin holders would see the value of their holdings increase dramatically, and perhaps permanently.
That upside is partly structural. Real-world assets demand frictionless settlement, 24-hour liquidity, and immutable audit trails. XRP's core features, specifically its deterministic fees, built-in compliance flags, and no dependence on external smart contract sandboxes, are optimized for those priorities. The chain's governance, steered by Ripple, also reassures risk officers who like having a phone number to call if something breaks.
Still, the chain's victory is far from assured. Regulators could impose hurdles to asset tokenization, rival chains could replicate the compliance stack or do it better, or institutions could decide that private blockchains meet their needs.
Nonetheless, assuming the sector keeps compounding at a rapid pace, XRP's share does not need to be dominant to reward holders.
Even a nibble of a trillion-dollar pool would translate into sustained demand for the native token, because issuers and market makers must hold XRP to pay transaction fees and provide liquidity. That demand, unlike speculative churn, grows alongside the real economy's asset base, which is exactly the kind of long-term linkage most cryptocurrencies lack.
For patient investors, the investment thesis here is straightforward. Park capital in an asset like XRP that's leveraged to institutional adoption rather than to fickle investor enthusiasm, then let the next decade of capital markets modernization do the heavy lifting.
As always, patience is mandatory, but so is recognizing when an inflection point has quietly passed, like now.
