XRP’s Liquidity Mirage: The Altcoin That Burns Bright But Fails to Ignite Demand

XRP’s ledger hums with transaction speed—settlements faster than a Wall Street trader’s excuse—yet adoption lags like a legacy bank’s tech stack. The sixth-largest crypto by market cap moves billions daily, but who’s actually using it beyond speculative wash trades?

Institutional pipe dreams vs. retail reality

Ripple’s enterprise partnerships read like a Fortune 500 wishlist, yet XRP’s on-chain activity tells a different story. Daily active addresses hover around 50k—pathetic next to Ethereum’s 600k+—while decentralized apps avoid its chain like a 2008 mortgage bond.

The regulatory hangover

Three years after the SEC lawsuit settled, the ’banking coin’ still hasn’t shaken its compliance limbo. Money transmitters would rather eat the 3% SWIFT fee than risk another Wells Notice cocktail.

Wake us when the ’bridge asset’ actually bridges something beyond hopium. Until then, XRP remains the blockchain equivalent of a Formula 1 car idling in a dealer’s lot—all performance specs, zero road miles.

Decoding the Ripple paradox

XRP closed April with an impressive 11% monthly return, but this wasn’t solely attributed to a “market-wide” alleviation of FUD. 

Institutional players were actively accumulating, with over 900 million XRP added to their treasuries in just the past month alone.

On top of that, Ripple hit two major ETF milestones: A spot XRP ETF debut in Brazil and a Futures XRP listing on Wall Street. Institutional interest? Check.

And just when you thought the news cycle was cooling off, Ripple’s native stablecoin, RLUSD, got the official nod from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

That puts it shoulder to shoulder with stablecoin heavyweights like USDC and USDT. Hence, marking a serious step forward in real-world utility.

Yet strangely, broader market excitement is still hitting the snooze button.

Is the market undervaluing XRP’s potential?

If you’re wondering why XRP still feels undervalued despite all the bullish buzz, the on-chain data might have the answer.

For starters, new address creation on the XRP Ledger has dropped off a cliff since December even though price action has climbed right back to the same levels. Translation? Retail interest isn’t exactly flooding in.

It gets even more telling: Daily active addresses have fallen 46% year-to-date, now sitting at just 21,282. That’s a pretty clear sign this rally is running more on seasoned hands than fresh faces.

And remember those massive Binance outflows that topped 1 billion XRP five months ago? They’ve dwindled to just 108 million, even lower than pre-election levels.

Source: CryptoQuant

In short, the cooling activity suggests investors are in a “wait-and-see” mode, despite the growing list of bullish catalysts.

Meanwhile, the speculation mill keeps spinning, with bold calls for XRP to reclaim the $3 mark in the NEAR term.

But with FOMO nowhere in sight, the current vibe feels more like a slow burn than a breakout rally. It’s a classic crypto paradox: All the ingredients for a bull run are there, yet the crowd’s still not biting.