Ripple partnered with Standard Chartered for RLUSD custody and expanded ETF offerings, while a critical XRP Ledger bug was patched; XRP price fell below $1.35 despite positive developments.
DeFi & Yields ·
Ripple advanced its institutional push through multiple channels this week, partnering with Standard Chartered to provide custody support for its RLUSD stablecoin and expanding into leveraged ETFs via its Ripple Prime platform. The Standard Chartered arrangement, managed through the bank's Dubai Financial Services Authority-regulated branch, targets improved operational efficiency and risk management for institutions trading stablecoins globally. Meanwhile, Evernorth—an XRP-holding company that debuted on Nasdaq in mid-October—announced a partnership with Ripple, Kraken, Coinbase, and BitGo to deploy millions of tokens into institutional strategies beginning in Q4 2026.
Despite these developments, demand for spot XRP ETFs has stalled, with net flows reaching $0.00 on multiple days this week after the funds attracted $11.31 million the prior week. A critical integer overflow bug in the XRP Ledger's payment engine—dormant since 2015—was patched, preventing potential minting of XRP beyond the fixed 100 billion supply cap. The vulnerability was fixed in xrpld 3.4.1 on September 25 and required hundreds of deliberately crafted operations to trigger.
XRP's price performance has not aligned with these institutional wins, declining below $1.35 following a broader market correction. What remains unclear is whether renewed ETF demand will materialize or whether institutional adoption will translate into sustained price support.