XRP

A native crypto asset of the XRP Ledger, launched in 2012, specialized for cross-border remittances and payments.

XRP

Overview

XRP is the native crypto asset of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source distributed ledger launched in 2012. It was designed to dramatically reduce the cost and time of cross-border remittances and payments between banks and financial institutions around the world, and by market capitalization it is one of the leading cryptocurrencies, ranking among the very top alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is repeatedly emphasized within the ecosystem that Ripple (Ripple Labs), the company that led its issuance and development, and the XRP asset itself are legally and technically distinct.

Key Details

Origins and Its Relationship with Ripple

XRP Ledger was designed and developed in 2012 by Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen, and Arthur Britto, and the first ledger was created in June of that year. Ripple (Ripple Labs), founded afterward, is a company that participates in developing the XRPL codebase and payment solutions; it does not directly issue or control XRP. In other words, the official position is that XRP is not an in-house token of a particular company but an asset on a public ledger that anyone can use. However, because Ripple has held a substantial portion of the initial supply, the debate over decentralization has continued for a long time.

Technical Structure of the XRP Ledger

XRPL is an account-based ledger, where each account can manage its XRP balance, trust lines, and also non-XRP assets (IOUs), NFTs, and token issuance functions together. Transactions are finalized within about 3–5 seconds, and the ledger was designed with a target throughput of thousands of transactions per second. Fees are structured so that a small amount of XRP is burned per transaction, which suppresses spam attacks while creating a fundamentally different economic model from proof-of-work (PoW), in which rewards go to miners. In addition, because there is no separate smart contract virtual machine, extended functionality is provided through standard transaction types built into the ledger and sidechains (Hooks, EVM sidechain, etc.).

Consensus Algorithm

XRPL uses the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA). Instead of mining, validator nodes vote based on a Unique Node List (UNL) to reach consensus on transaction order and ledger state. Its characteristics include extremely low energy consumption compared with proof-of-work and an orientation toward immediate finality rather than probabilistic finality. However, criticism that the validator set is relatively closed and assessments that it enhances performance and predictability coexist.

Token Economy and Supply

XRP's maximum issuance is fixed at 100 billion with no additional issuance. At launch, the entire supply was pre-mined, with part distributed to the founders and to Ripple. Starting in December 2017, Ripple placed its holdings in escrow and introduced a method of releasing up to 1 billion XRP per month in order to mitigate supply shocks. Because of the amount burned as transaction fees, the circulating supply is structured to decline gradually over the long term.

Payment and Remittance Use: On-Demand Liquidity (ODL)

Ripple provides On-Demand Liquidity (ODL, now Ripple Payments), a service that uses XRP as a bridge asset so that remittance institutions can move funds in real time without holding currency accounts in each country in advance. It has cooperated with payment partners in various markets, including the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan, and expanding connections with traditional financial infrastructure is a core strategy.

Regulation and the SEC Lawsuit

In December 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple and its executives, alleging that they had sold XRP as an unregistered security. In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that institutional sales constituted a violation of securities law, but that programmatic sales to ordinary investors through exchanges were not securities. In the final ruling in August 2024, a civil penalty of approximately $125 million was imposed, and after the SEC's appeal and subsequent withdrawal, the case moved toward conclusion in 2025. This ruling is regarded as an important precedent for the scope of digital asset regulation in the United States.

Latest Trends

In late 2024, Ripple expanded its business scope by launching RLUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, after receiving approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). In 2025, with the enactment of stablecoin regulatory legislation (the GENIUS Act) in the United States, discussions on incorporation into the institutional framework accelerated, and institutional investor accessibility improved, with spot XRP ETF applications being pursued by multiple asset management firms. The price of XRP surged after November 2024, rising to around $3.6 in July 2025, marking its highest level since 2018, and its market capitalization ranking also returned to the top tier. Ripple is expanding payment licenses and partnerships in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and XRPL is clearly evolving beyond simple remittances into a financial infrastructure platform, with additions such as an EVM-compatible sidechain, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and institutional lending and custody services. At the same time, debates over the level of validator decentralization and the influence of large holders remain ongoing.

XRP