Ripple Exec Forecasts 50% Fortune 500 DAT Adoption by 2026
Get ready for corporate crypto to go mainstream—or at least that's what one blockchain insider is betting on.
The Big Prediction
A senior Ripple executive just dropped a bold forecast: half of the Fortune 500 will be using Digital Asset Technology (DAT) within the next two years. That's not just a few pilot programs; it's a fundamental shift in how the world's biggest companies move value.
Why This Isn't Just Hype
The logic is simple. Legacy financial rails are slow, expensive, and opaque. DAT—encompassing everything from blockchain-based settlements to tokenized assets—cuts costs, bypasses intermediaries, and provides real-time transparency. For a multinational juggling a thousand transactions a day, that's not innovation; it's a competitive necessity.
Forget the crypto bros trading memecoins. This is about CFOs and treasury departments. They're not chasing 100x returns; they're chasing 10% efficiency gains on billion-dollar balance sheets. The institutional machinery is finally warming up to the tech's utility, moving past the volatility headlines.
The Road Ahead (and the Skeptics)
Mass adoption won't happen overnight. Regulatory gray areas persist, legacy system integration is a nightmare, and corporate risk aversion is a powerful force. Some old-guard finance veterans will dismiss this as another tech fad—right up until their competitor's quarterly report shows a stunning reduction in settlement costs.
The prediction is a stake in the ground. It sets a timeline and a metric. By 2026, we'll know if this was visionary or just more conference-stage optimism. Either way, the race to modernize corporate finance is on, and the starting gun has officially fired. After all, nothing motivates a Fortune 500 company like the fear of being last to a cost-saving party—unless it's the fear of missing a profit-boosting trend their shareholders are already asking about.
Corporate crypto holdings will reach $1 trillion, says Long
According to a 2025 Coinbase survey cited in Ripple’s president’s predictions, 60% of Fortune 500 companies were actively working on blockchain-related business plans that year. At the same time, more than 200 publicly traded companies have added bitcoin to their treasury holdings.
Long believes the referenced survey is a vote of confidence in the digital asset treasury model. The number of such firms has gone up from just four in 2020 to more than 200, with nearly half of that in 2025 alone, she explained.
“By the end of 2026, balance sheets will hold over $1 trillion in digital assets, and half of Fortune 500 companies will have formalized digital asset strategies. And not just crypto exposure, but active participation across tokenized assets, digital asset treasuries, stablecoins, onchain T-bills, and programmable financial instruments,” the business head continued.
Speaking on the amount of capital institutions have to spare, Long said there was more than $700 billion sitting unused on S&P 1500 balance sheets and over $1.3 trillion parked in European firms. According to her, tokenized assets and stablecoins are the best way to deploy that capital into market liquidity that WOULD help the global economy grow.
Long expects financial institutions to lean on regulated stablecoins for capital markets activity, particularly for 24/7 collateral mobility. B2B payments became the leading real-world use case for stablecoins last year, reaching an annualized pace of $76 billion.
Mergers and acquisitions on tradfi by crypto companies
Crypto-related mergers and acquisitions hit $8.6 billion in 2025, with Ripple itself taking over financial institutions like debt manager GTreasury and hedge fund Hidden Road.
The stablecoin issuer could continue buying more traditional firms to further push crypto into mainstream financial services. However, its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, said Ripple is not looking to go public anytime soon, Cryptopolitan reported.
Long also talked about the company’s conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to charter Ripple National Trust Bank, which the company will now use to provide custodial services under federal oversight.
A regulatory effort by the TRUMP government is pushing banks to become multi-custodians for crypto and to manage its operational risks. Long is adamant that these forces will lead more than half of the world’s top 50 banks to create at least one new custody relationship in 2026.
Last Thursday, Ripple announced a financing arrangement with LMAX Group to provide $150 million in multi-year funding to the institutional trading firm and integrate RLUSD into LMAX’s global exchange as a settlement and collateral asset. RLUSD will be available through LMAX Custody segregated wallets and through LMAX Kiosk, where trading in several asset classes uses stablecoin collateral.
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