A 2021 Citibank document — and a single choice of words inside it — has reignited debate around XRP. Jesse, a researcher at Apex Crypto Insights, argues that the phrase “Regulated Internet of Value” originally used in the paper was later rephrased to “Regulated Liability Network” because the former made an obvious connection to Ripple and its vision for payments infrastructure.
Price behavior raises questions
Jesse points to XRP’s price history as a starting point. The token hit $3.84 during the 2018 bull run and climbed to roughly $3.60 earlier in the current cycle, yet it has spent much of the past several years rangebound while Bitcoin and other large-cap assets posted much stronger rallies. That disconnect, he says, is difficult to explain under normal market dynamics and could be consistent with an asset being constrained for reasons beyond ordinary trading — though he is careful to label this a hypothesis, not proof.
The “Internet of Value” argument
At the heart of Jesse’s case is a broader view of XRP’s role. Rather than treating it as just another speculative token, he frames XRP as a candidate for an “internet of value” — a payment and settlement layer modeled on Ripple’s Interledger Protocol, which is designed to move value across different ledgers as easily as the internet moves information.
Institutional breadcrumbs
Jesse traces a chain of institutional references to support his thesis. He highlights comments by Citibank’s Tony McLaughlin, who has linked concepts like a Regulated Liability Network with shared-ledger settlement ideas, and points to work from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that contemplates a unified ledger replacing parts of correspondent banking and possibly even SWIFT. Taken together, these references suggest major banks are exploring architectures that could centralize or standardize cross-border settlement.
Why volatility would matter
If a future settlement system were tied to a specific digital asset, Jesse argues, extreme price swings would be a major problem: volatility undermines any asset’s usefulness as a reserve or settlement medium. From that perspective, a case could be made for keeping an asset’s price relatively stable — which Jesse suggests might help explain XRP’s long periods of muted movement.
No smoking gun
Importantly, Jesse does not claim to have definitive evidence of market manipulation or coordinated suppression. His argument is interpretive, built on document language, institutional statements and price patterns. He presents it as a lens for understanding XRP’s unusual behavior, but the question remains open and without a public, conclusive proof of deliberate price control.
Bottom line
The debate highlights how language in institutional papers and slow-moving price action can feed broader theories about the future of payments and who will control it. Whether XRP is being held back for systemic reasons or simply caught in market forces is still unresolved — but the discussion underscores the growing overlap between traditional financial planning and crypto infrastructure bets.
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