Ripple’s push toward becoming a fully regulated bank has reignited one of the loudest debates in the XRP community: could formal banking status be the catalyst that sends XRP into price territory it has never seen?
What happened
- In December 2025 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted conditional approval for Ripple to form a national trust bank — Ripple National Trust Bank — a first for a crypto-native firm. The charter is intended to enable the custody and management of reserves for Ripple’s planned RLUSD stablecoin.
- Ripple has also applied for a Federal Reserve master account. If approved, that account would allow the trust bank to hold dollar reserves at the Fed and connect directly to FedWire and FedNow payment rails — effectively plugging Ripple into core U.S. payments infrastructure.
Why the community is excited — and what’s being overstated
- Social posts have amplified optimism, with accounts like KingXRP declaring Ripple has “officially obtained a banking license” and valuing the company above $120 billion. Those posts capture the enthusiasm but gloss over key details: the OCC approval is conditional, and the Fed master account — the step that would embed Ripple into the U.S. payment system — is still pending.
Balance sheet & token math
- Ripple’s last reported private valuation came after a $500 million strategic round that implied about a $40 billion company valuation.
- Ripple is also a major XRP holder. Estimates put the company’s total XRP holdings at about 42 billion coins, broken down roughly as:
- 4.5–6.4 billion XRP in company wallets
- ~33 billion XRP locked in cryptographic escrow
- At a hypothetical price of $3 per XRP, 40 billion XRP would represent roughly $120 billion on Ripple’s balance sheet.
- Ambitious price targets are circulating: to reach $25 per XRP — with a current circulating supply of about 61.9 billion XRP — the market capitalization would exceed $1.5 trillion. Proponents argue such a move, combined with Ripple’s holdings, could propel Ripple’s balance sheet into the hundreds of billions and rank the company alongside the world’s largest banks.
What would need to happen for $25?
- Market commentators note that banking approval alone would not be enough. A sustained, broad adoption cycle is necessary: deeper institutional on-ramps, real-world utility for XRPL-based rails and stablecoins, greater liquidity, and continued regulatory clarity. The Fed master account, if granted, would be a major institutional validation and operational enabler — but it’s not guaranteed.
On-chain infrastructure and partnerships
- Development on the XRP Ledger is progressing. A concrete example is RealFi Payment Solutions’ recent announcement of a partnership with Shopify to build the first XRPL-powered payment rewards app for global e-commerce — a sign of growing interest in XRPL-native payments and rewards use cases.
Bottom line
Ripple’s conditional OCC charter marks a significant regulatory milestone and fuels bullish narratives, but key steps remain — most notably Fed master account approval and broader ecosystem adoption. Those outcomes, rather than headlines alone, will ultimately determine whether XRP’s next major price move is incremental or historic. Watch the Fed application, RLUSD rollout, and XRPL payment integrations for the clearest signals.
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