Ripple Labs is having a fantastic 2025. With a fresh $40 billion valuation, a war chest fattened by another $500 million in funding, and a nearly $4 billion acquisition spree under its belt, the company is making all the right moves to become a dominant force. CEO Brad Garlinghouse is on a victory tour, telling anyone who will listen that Ripple Labs is conquering crypto. Now the XRP-linked firm wants to take on traditional finance.
There’s just one problem. One glaring, awkward, and numerically significant discrepancy in this otherwise triumphant narrative: the performance of XRP.
While Ripple the corporation is acting like a Wall Street titan in the making, XRP, the digital asset at the heart of its ecosystem, has been conspicuously quiet. As Bitcoin and Ether sailed to record highs this year—$126,000 and $3,900, respectively—XRP has been trading sideways. This isn't just a minor lag; it's a fundamental disconnect between corporate execution and asset performance. It forces us to ask a critical question: Is Ripple building a financial empire, or is it quietly building an escape hatch from its own crypto-native identity?
The TradFi Acquisition Engine
Let's look at the cash deployment. In 2025 alone, Ripple has spent billions to acquire companies that look a lot more like traditional fintech players than crypto startups. It bought prime brokerage Hidden Road for a substantial sum (nearly $1.3 billion in April) and followed it up by acquiring software firm GTreasury for over $1 billion. These aren't protocols or decentralized applications; they are established gateways to the institutional world Garlinghouse is so eager to conquer.
This strategy is less about building a new, decentralized financial system and more about renovating the existing one with blockchain-based plumbing. Think of it this way: Ripple isn't constructing a brand-new city on the promise of crypto. Instead, it's buying a few floors in the old Wall Street skyscraper, ripping out the copper wiring, and installing fiber-optic cables powered by its ledger technology. The building remains the same, but the infrastructure gets an upgrade.
This integration-first approach is shrewd, especially given the current regulatory climate. With the SEC and CFTC dialing back their aggressive stance under a crypto-friendly administration, and giants like Citi and Bank of America openly exploring stablecoins, the timing is perfect. Garlinghouse notes that the U.S. is finally "leaning in" on crypto. But what, precisely, are they leaning into? Is it the disruptive, peer-to-peer promise of decentralized assets, or is it the controlled, enterprise-grade efficiency of a blockchain-powered settlement layer offered by a centralized company? The data points overwhelmingly to the latter.
A Tale of Two Valuations
This brings us back to the core conflict. Garlinghouse claims that as Ripple builds utility and scales its solutions, it will be "uniquely good for the XRP ecosystem." On the surface, this makes logical sense. More institutional partners using Ripple's technology should, in theory, drive demand for XRP.
But the market isn't buying it. Not yet, anyway.
I've analyzed hundreds of corporate strategies, and this kind of divergence between a company's private valuation and the performance of its core, publicly-traded asset is a significant red flag. It suggests that investors see value in Ripple's business—its software, its client relationships, its regulatory maneuvering—but remain unconvinced about the role of XRP in that future. The discrepancy is stark. While Bitcoin saw gains of about 150%—to be more exact, 152% from its January 2024 ETF launch to its current high—XRP has remained stubbornly range-bound.
Garlinghouse points to legislative hurdles, like the stalled Clarity Act, as a key reason banks are hesitant to "really lean in." It’s a valid point; regulatory uncertainty is a powerful brake on institutional adoption. But is it the only reason for XRP's underperformance? Or is the market beginning to price in a future where Ripple can be wildly successful even if XRP is not? What happens if the institutions Ripple signs deals with decide to use the XRP Ledger for its speed and low cost, but settle transactions using their own bank-issued stablecoins instead of the XRP token itself?
The company's success is no longer a simple proxy for the token's success. The two have become distinct variables, and their correlation appears to be breaking down.
A Fintech in Crypto Clothing
When you strip away the crypto-industry branding, Ripple's current strategy looks remarkably familiar. It's a B2B financial technology company. It sells software and services to large institutions to help them move money more efficiently. The fact that it uses a blockchain and a digital token to do so is an implementation detail, not the core of its value proposition to clients like Bank of America or Citi.
The market seems to have figured this out. The $40 billion valuation is for Ripple the enterprise software vendor. The sideways price of XRP reflects deep uncertainty about the token's mandated role in the institutional ecosystem Ripple is spending billions to capture. The company is using its vast XRP treasury to fund a pivot away from crypto speculation and toward the predictable, recurring-revenue world of enterprise fintech. It's a brilliant corporate maneuver, but for those holding XRP with the belief that its value is inextricably tied to the company's success, the numbers are telling a very different, and much more complicated, story.
