XRP ETFs: XRP Near $2.13 While XRPI and XRPR Ride $1.3B Post-SEC Inflows

XRP, XRPI, XRPR: ETF-driven rotation at the front of the 2026 crypto trade

XRP and the ETFs: 2026 starts with hard outperformance versus Bitcoin

Spot XRP-USD opened 2026 by doing what most investors expected from Bitcoin, not from a “second tier” alt. In the first week of January, XRP rallied roughly 25%, while Bitcoin added about 6% over the same window. Price today gravitates around $2.10–$2.15, with the market digesting that vertical move rather than unwinding it.
On the listed product side, spot XRP ETFs have already delivered double-digit year-to-date gains. A core spot fund is up about 20.6% YTD at $24.38 with $309.7 million AUM, while another spot vehicle trades at $42.27, up 19% YTD on $277.8 million AUM. Leveraged XRP ETFs show exactly what a high-beta wrapper can do in this tape: one 2x daily-return product trades around $12.47 and is up 37.8% YTD, while another 2x ETF at $6.78 has gained 37.5% YTD.
Against that backdrop, XRPI and XRPR sit as the pure plays on this theme. Early-January prints put XRPI in the low $11 range and XRPR around the mid-$16s, both tracking the same underlying XRP-USD move but with different risk profiles. The message from price is clear: the ETF complex has turned XRP into a front-line asset rather than a side bet.

Regulatory reset and political catalyst: why XRP is even allowed to have ETFs

None of this exists without the regulatory flip that took XRP from courtroom headline to ETF wrapper. The sequence matters.
In November 2024, Donald Trump wins the U.S. election on an explicitly pro-crypto, pro-clarity message. From just before the vote into his inauguration two months later, XRP spikes roughly 500%, front-running the expectation that its SEC overhang will be resolved under a friendlier administration. That trade fully obeys the “buy rumor, sell news” logic: parabolic move into the event, sharp shake-out once the headline is out.
The key structural change lands in August 2025, when the long SEC case against Ripple and XRP-USD is finally dropped. That decision removes the single largest binary risk that kept big pools of capital away from the asset. Within three months, spot XRP ETFs list in the U.S. and other major venues, giving institutions a regulated way to hold XRP exposure in size without touching wallets, exchanges or custody workflows directly.
Today’s XRPI and XRPR pricing reflects that new regime. You’re no longer being paid to take legal risk; you are being paid to take market, volatility and product-structure risk.

ETF flows: from perfect streak to the first $40m test day

The ETF flow tape explains why XRP has been able to run ahead of Bitcoin and Ethereum in early 2026.
Since launch in November 2025, grantor-style spot XRP ETFs have accumulated about $1.3–1.4 billion in assets in roughly 50 days of trading, with no net outflow days for more than five weeks. One dataset shows 43–36 consecutive positive sessions, another tallies around $1.18 billion of net inflows over that period. At current prices, that translates to more than 500 million XRP effectively locked inside ETF structures. Total ETF net assets around $1.53 billion account for roughly 1.16% of XRP’s market cap.
December was the tell. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs suffered large net redemptions, XRP funds absorbed about $483 million of fresh capital. That divergence is exactly why financial TV now talks about XRP as a “new darling” rather than a peripheral token.
The first real stress event arrives on January 7, 2026. U.S. XRP ETFs print their first net outflow day, with about $40–41 million leaving the complex. Nearly the entire number comes from a single product that sees a $47.25 million redemption; other issuers post flat to slightly positive flows. Total value traded across XRP ETFs sits near $33.7 million on the day.
This matters for XRPI and XRPR holders because the narrative shifts. Up to that point, flows were a one-way indicator of demand. Now the market is forced to price in something more realistic: ETF inflows are strong but not linear, and profit-taking will cut into the streak after a 25%–plus underlying move.

XRPI vs XRPR inside the XRP ETF stack: exposure, beta, use-case

All the listed XRP funds sit on the same underlying token, but they serve very different mandates. Positioning XRPI and XRPR correctly is crucial.
XRPI should be treated as the core, spot-tracking XRP ETF. Its role is to give exposure to XRP-USD with a structure that most traditional portfolios can plug into: daily liquidity, transparent NAV, management fee in the tens of basis points, and no embedded leverage. Returns will stay close to spot XRP, adjusted for fee drag and minor tracking deviations.
XRPR is a higher-octane tool. Depending on its final design, it either behaves like an aggressive spot wrapper concentrating flows in a smaller, more volatile vehicle, or it leans closer to the 2x products already on the market, which have delivered 37–38% YTD versus ~20% for the spot ETFs. If you map that pattern onto XRPR, you should think in terms of amplified participation: a 25% move in XRP-USD can translate into 35–50% swings in XRPR over weeks, in both directions.
The broader stack shows how the risk ladders up. Spot funds around $24.38 and $42.27 with $309.7m and $277.8m AUM respectively charge 34–35 bps and trade 0.57m and 0.09m shares per day. Leveraged funds at $12.47 and $6.78 charge 94–164 bps and turn over 0.34m to 2.76m shares a day. XRPI and XRPR sit inside this ecosystem: the first is a position for core exposure; the second is a tactical instrument for traders who are comfortable living with ETF-level leverage on an already volatile underlying.

Liquidity, volumes and the supply squeeze behind XRP’s move

The structural story is simple: ETF demand is rising into a shrinking freely-tradable float.
Spot XRP ETFs collectively hold around 1% of circulating supply already. With $1.3–1.53 billion of assets and more than 500 million XRP sequestered inside funds, a material portion of liquidity has moved from exchanges to regulated vehicles. In parallel, on-exchange XRP balances have dropped to their lowest levels in years.
Daily trading statistics back this up. A representative spot ETF trades around 0.57 million shares a day; a second, higher-priced spot fund turns over near 0.09 million shares. Leveraged ETFs see 0.34 million and 2.76 million shares respectively. That is real secondary liquidity, but it is concentrated in a handful of tickers rather than widely dispersed across dozens of exchanges and pairs.
For XRPI, that structure is supportive. When new money wants spot XRP exposure, it is increasingly channeled through ETFs rather than direct token purchases, which boosts secondary demand for XRPI units and stabilises primary creation activity. For XRPR, the effect is more extreme: traders crowd into the most liquid leveraged wrapper when the theme is hot, pushing short-term moves well beyond the underlying and then exiting aggressively when flows flip.
If ETF inflows revert to the December pace, the funds could remove billions of dollars’ worth of XRP from circulating supply by year-end. That is the core of the “supply-tightness” thesis behind the token’s current trade.

Macro, flows and levels: how XRP-USD, XRPI and XRPR sit in the 2026 crypto hierarchy

The macro tape is not irrelevant noise; it drives the risk budget that ultimately feeds ETF flows.
Bitcoin opened 2026 by pushing toward $95,000 before stalling back near $90,000 as ETF optimism faded and futures positioning turned cautious. Ethereum hovers around $3,100, with its own ETFs recording their first 2026 outflow day. Both sets of products saw sizable redemptions on the same sessions when XRP ETFs printed the first negative flow print. That tells you the XRP move is anchored in a broader risk-asset context, not in isolation.
Against that, XRP-USD remains around $2.12–2.13, down roughly 5% on the day of the first big ETF outflow but still up more than 20% from December lows and more than 400% above pre-election 2024 levels. Technically, the market is watching three levels.
The $2.00–$2.05 band is the first meaningful support. Holding that zone keeps the current phase as a standard post-rally consolidation. A clean break and daily close below opens the door toward the high $1.80s, where earlier ETF-driven bids first accelerated.
On the upside, bulls need a decisive daily close back above $2.25–$2.35 to show that the first profit-taking wave has been absorbed. If that happens with ETF flows stabilising or turning positive again, the path back toward $2.60 and $2.80 is technically reasonable.
For XRPI, that translates into a trading corridor in the low-teens per share for a standard consolidation and scope for mid-teens if XRP-USD revisits the upper band. XRPR will overshoot both ways; a breakdown to the high-$1.80s in the token can easily produce drawdowns of 30–40% in a leveraged wrapper before any kind of base forms.

Utility, banks and the stability problem: how much does the real world use XRP?

Price and flows are not the full story. Utility, or the lack of it, will decide whether the ETF trade is short-lived or durable.
Ripple’s network footprint is significant. RippleNet connects over 300 banks and financial institutions across more than 45 countries, including major hubs in Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East. Large players such as Santander have used Ripple technology for faster remittances; U.S. names like PNC Bank and Bank of America have run pilots on Ripple infrastructure.
The catch is that most of these institutions currently use Ripple’s messaging and tracking stack, not XRP-USD itself, for settlement. They want speed and transparency without the mark-to-market risk of holding a volatile token on their balance sheet.
At the same time, Ripple has pushed into stablecoins with products such as RLUSD, aligning with what banks actually want: fiat-backed, low-volatility instruments that plug cleanly into existing risk frameworks. From a strategic perspective, that diversification helps Ripple the company but dilutes the centrality of XRP the token. Critics argue exactly that: XRP is being quietly de-emphasised in favour of more bank-friendly rails.
There is also the supply debate. Ripple still controls billions of XRP in escrow, which means XRP does not behave like a hard-capped, digital-gold asset. From a scarcity perspective, that caps the long-run multiple the market is willing to assign. On the usage side, on-chain transaction counts and value have not kept pace with headline narratives; competition from well-established stablecoins has taken a significant share of the cross-border and treasury-settlement niche XRP was originally positioned to dominate.
Sell-side houses are still willing to model aggressive upside scenarios. Some institutional research has floated $7–$8 per XRP by 2026, explicitly tying that to continued ETF inflows, sustained regulatory clarity and a pickup in institutional use. That kind of target implies a multi-hundred-percent upside from current levels, but it also assumes that XRP solves both the adoption drag and the escrow overhang simultaneously. For XRPI and XRPR, those calls frame the right tail of the distribution, not the base case.

Risk map for XRPI and XRPR: what can break this trade

The risk set is straightforward but non-trivial, and it looks different for XRPI and XRPR.
The first layer is macro and liquidity. A renewed tightening cycle from the Federal Reserve, a negative surprise in U.S. growth or a sharp de-risking across equities could compress risk budgets into mid-2026. In that environment, the XRP ETF flow profile reverses: the first $40–41 million outflow day becomes a template rather than an exception, and the cumulative $1.18 billion of inflows is a source of supply on the way out.
The second layer is ETF-specific behaviour. Single-fund redemptions like the $47.25 million one we just saw can be portfolio rebalances or inventory management, not panic selling. But if outflows broaden across issuers and persist for weeks, XRPI trades at a discount to its own recent narrative. XRPR is more exposed here: leveraged products see flows flip violently as traders chase or abandon themes, and slippage, rebalancing drag and intraday gaps become material.
The third layer is narrative risk. XRP’s current re-rating is anchored in three talking points: legal clarity, ETF adoption and “institutionalisation” of Ripple’s technology stack. Any undercut to those stories will be punished quickly. That can be as blunt as a new regulatory line of attack, or as subtle as large banks doubling down on dollar or euro stablecoins while leaving XRP on the shelf.
Finally, there is execution risk on adoption. Ripple admits that on-chain XRP settlement is growing more slowly than hoped, and that many institutions still prefer off-chain or stablecoin-based solutions. If, by late 2026, on-chain metrics do not show meaningful progress despite the ETF inflow story, the market will begin to treat XRP more as a politically resilient trading asset and less as infrastructure. That matters for terminal valuation.

Verdict: XRPI and XRPR – Buy, Sell or Hold?

Taking all of the above together – price action, ETF flows, structural supply, utility, and macro – the trade-off is clear.
For XRPI, the balance of factors still leans Bullish / Buy for investors who can live with crypto-level volatility and mark-to-market drawdowns. Legal risk is largely neutralised, ETFs have already absorbed about 1% of supply with $1.3–1.5 billion in assets, on-exchange balances are tight, and the macro backdrop is not hostile as long as Bitcoin holds the $90,000 area and broader risk assets do not roll over. The first $40m outflow day looks like profit-taking after a 25% underlying run, not a structural exit, and key technical support around $2.00–$2.05 has not yet been broken. In that framework, XRPI is a high-beta way to express a view that XRP’s ETF trade has more room to run, with the caveat that any sustained break below the high-$1.80s in XRP-USD turns it into a Hold and forces a risk reassessment.
For XRPR, the rating is more aggressive: Speculative Buy for traders, Avoid for conservative capital. The leverage effect that produced 37–38% YTD gains in comparable products cuts both ways. A grindy consolidation between $2.00 and $2.35 in the token will chew through XRPR via volatility decay; a clean push to $2.60–$2.80 can drive another explosive leg higher. That makes XRPR appropriate only for accounts that actively manage entries and exits and understand the mechanics of daily-rebalanced or high-beta ETFs.
Bottom line: the XRP ETF complex has earned its 2026 spotlight. XRPI is a data-supported Buy for investors specifically seeking concentrated exposure to the XRP ETF theme. XRPR is an offensive satellite position, not a core holding, best used tactically around flows and levels rather than as a long-term parking spot for capital.

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