Bitwise CIO Explains XRP’s Institutional Appeal After 80% ETF Jump

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan has laid out why financial advisors are buying Ripple’s native token, and the reasons have little to do with it price.

His remarks follow an 80% rise in XRP ETF net assets during the third quarter, to a record $1.77 billion on September 25.

XRP Will Always Be Around

“A lot of financial advisors look at crypto and wonder, ‘Are these things for real? Will they persist? Will they be here in the future?’ And XRP has this enormous track record and this enormous background that gives people confidence it will be there in the future,” Hougan explained.

The second reason is practical. XRP “fits into real-world applications that they can understand,” according to the CIO. Advisors follow the stablecoin space and the cross-currency and liquidity space, and pay attention to news such as Ripple getting a bank charter.

XRP ETFs took in about $76 million last week, their best week in a month, extending the run to 11 straight weeks of inflows.

Bitwise’s fund leads with $677 million in cumulative inflows, followed by Franklin’s at $501 million, while the one from 21Shares has so far bled $21.15 million. On Monday, SoSoValue data shows, Canary’s XRPC added $3.96 million, taking cumulative inflows across all XRP ETFs to $1.79 billion. Total net assets were $1.68 billion, below Friday’s record level.

XRP Price Watch

At the time of writing, XRP was trading around $1.50, up about 2% in 24 hours, almost 7% in the last 14 days, and nearly 8% across the past month. However, it’s still 47% lower than where it was a year ago and 59% below its all-time high of $3.65.

The last time XRP had a longer run of consecutive monthly gains was in 2023, when it went on a run from September to December that year, which was broken by an 18% drop in January 2024.