jakiro
Author: Seed.eth
In November 2025, Ripple Labs announced a new round of strategic financing of US$500 million, and the company’s valuation jumped to US$40 billion.This is the crypto financial company’s first public fundraising in six years and the largest capital injection since its Series C round of financing in 2019.
More importantly, the capital faction behind this round of financing is extraordinary: the two giants on Wall Street, Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, led the investment, and joined forces with well-known institutions such as Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace.
For those who have heard of Ripple, this can be regarded as a “comeback” – is this still the same Ripple that was deeply troubled by SEC lawsuits and was even considered a “zombie company” for a time?
From “storytelling master” to “compliance disaster area”
Founded in 2012, Ripple is one of the oldest projects in the encryption circle. Its core technology is XRP Ledger, a decentralized ledger designed specifically for cross-border payments.Ripple relies on this to develop payment and clearing systems. The token XRP was popular all over the world from 2017 to 2018, and its market value ranked among the top three, second only to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
However, as the currency price plummeted and the fact that the cooperation was “watered” emerged, Ripple’s “bank-level cooperation” narrative began to collapse.
During this period, Forbes once published an article pointing out that Ripple’s core business model may be a “pump and dump” scam: Ripple uses its huge amount of XRP to buy cooperation, create the illusion of prosperity, and use vague statements to avoid regulation. Its ultimate goal is not to truly promote the technology, but to push up the value of its free tokens through marketing and hype, so that company insiders can eventually cash out and profit.
In December 2020, the regulatory hammer fell.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple for “unregistered sales of securities,” accusing it of illegally raising more than $1.3 billion through XRP.
This is the crypto industry’s most important regulatory battle.
The chain reaction caused by the lawsuit was devastating: mainstream exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken quickly delisted XRP; long-term partner MoneyGram terminated cooperation; the price of XRP plummeted by more than 60% in the following month.Not only did Ripple’s business suffer, but it was also completely included in the “compliance blacklist.”
strategic transformation
Although this tug-of-war that lasted for several years cost Ripple nearly US$200 million in legal fees, it also won it critical breathing space and favorable rulings from some courts, buying valuable time for strategic transformation.
In 2024, it officially launched RLUSD, a stable currency anchored to the US dollar, focusing on compliance and payment and settlement for financial institutions.Unlike USDT and USDC, RLUSD is not a “stable currency” between exchanges, but an attempt to enter the traditional credit card and cross-border clearing system.
In 2025, Ripple announced cooperation with Mastercard, WebBank, Gemini, etc. to use RLUSD for real-time settlement of credit cards, becoming the world’s first on-chain stablecoin to enter the card network system.
This not only opens the B-side channel for stablecoin applications, but also clears the way for Ripple to integrate with the real financial world.
In order to build complete on-chain financial capabilities, Ripple will launch a series of precise mergers and acquisitions between 2023 and 2025:
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Acquisition of Metaco: Acquired institutional-grade digital asset custody technology to lay the foundation for serving large financial institutions.
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Acquisition of Rail: Obtained a stablecoin issuance and management system, accelerating the launch of RLUSD.
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Capture Hidden Road: The last piece of the puzzle is the institutional credit network and cross-border clearing capabilities.
Through these mergers and acquisitions, Ripple’s system capabilities have expanded from a single cross-border payment to a full-stack financial infrastructure of “stable currency issuance + institutional custody + cross-chain clearing”.
The truth behind the 40 billion valuation
On the surface, Ripple’s transformation path is getting wider and wider.
But veteran players in the capital market see a different picture.
To understand the true logic of this financing, one must see the essence of Ripple: a huge “digital asset treasury.”
At the time of XRP’s creation, 80 billion of the 100 billion tokens were handed over to Ripple for custody.As of now, the company still holds 34.76 billion coins, with a nominal value of more than US$80 billion based on market price – twice its financing valuation.
According to multiple venture capitalists, the $500 million transaction is closely related to the purchase of XRP held by Ripple, and is likely to be purchased at a price well below the spot price.
From an investment perspective, investors are equivalent to buying an asset at an mNAV (market value to net asset value ratio) of 0.5 times.Even if a 50% liquidity discount is applied to XRP positions, the value of these assets is still equal to the company’s valuation.
“Even if they can’t successfully build the business themselves, they could simply buy another company,” a person familiar with the matter told Unchained.
One venture capitalist said: “This company has no value other than holding XRP. No one uses their technology and no one cares about the network/blockchain.”
Some community members said: “Ripple’s equity itself may not be worth much, and it will certainly not reach US$40 billion.”
One participant expressed the true logic: “The payment track is too hot now, and investors need to bet on multiple horses on the track.”
Ripple is just one of them – a horse that may have mediocre technology, but has extremely abundant food and grass (XRP reserves).
For ripple, this is a win-win situation:
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Stable valuation: “Officialize” the US$40 billion valuation in the private equity market to provide a pricing benchmark for early investors to exit.
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Avoid selling pressure: Use financing cash for acquisitions to avoid selling XRP and causing an impact on the market.
From this perspective, the story of Ripple becomes the most classical financial story: about assets, about valuation, and about liquidity management.
From the SEC’s dock to the conference rooms of Wall Street, the path Ripple has taken is the epitome of the entire encryption industry’s transition from idealism to realism.If Ripple was the pinnacle of “narrative economics” in the past, then today it shows how the project team can complete a “soft landing” by relying on the most original asset strength when the tide recedes.
