‘The Foundation Is Set’: Ripple Exec Signals XRP’s Next Wave Is Here

According to Reece Merrick, Ripple’s senior executive officer/managing director for Middle East and Africa, XRP is emerging as the backbone for real-world financial infrastructure.

Citing the recently updated XRP Ledger Institutional DeFi road map, which details how XRP Ledger is evolving into a daily use layer for institutions, with XRP powering settlement, FX, collateral and on-chain credit, Merrick noted that the foundation is set with the next wave already here.

This week, RippleX revealed the latest institutional DeFi update, highlighting where the road map is headed next.

Native on-chain privacy, permissioned markets and institutional lending are set to go live in the coming months, with the focus areas in 2026 being lending, privacy and permissioned on-chain markets.

Features such as the MPT, Permissioned Domains, Lending Protocol, Confidential Transfers are expected to scale use cases for tokenized assets, FX and on-chain credit. Meanwhile Credentials, Token Escrow and Batch Transactions will bring about use cases in compliance, enhancing XRP’s utility in governance and reserve box.

Permissioned DEX, Permissioned Domains, Credentials with XRP as the bridge asset are expected to enhance XRP’s utility in auto-bridging, fee burns, reserve requirements, settlement and liquidity provision.

Native on-ledger credit markets through the Lending Protocol will allow XRP to both be borrowed and lent. It is also the default bridge asset in FX flows and settlement.

XRP price rebounds

Following a week-long massive sell-off, the crypto market is showing signs of recovery, with XRP now trading in the green. According to Santiment, XRP rebounded as much as 25% from a low of $1.11 on Feb. 6 to reach $1.55.

At the time of writing, XRP had slightly retreated, but was up 9% in the last 24 hours to $1.41 and down 18% weekly.

According to Santiment, panic sellers might have stopped to notice the massive activity on XRP Ledger, with unique addresses suddenly skyrocketing to 78,727 in just one eight-hour candle (the highest in six months).

Obvious whale accumulation also occurred during this dip, with 1,389 separate $100,000 whale transactions, which is the highest in four months. Santiment noted both as major signals of a price reversal.