After a five-year legal battle that felt longer than waiting for international wire transfers (which, ironically, is what XRP is supposed to fix), the SEC finally admitted defeat in August 2025. The verdict: XRP is not a security when regular people trade it on exchanges. It only becomes a security when Ripple sells it directly to institutions, which is basically the regulatory equivalent of "it's complicated."
This matters because institutions hate complications more than they hate missing out on 400% gains. Franklin Templeton looked at the settlement and thought, "Finally, we can sell this to Midwestern pension funds without triggering compliance panic attacks."
Sure, Grayscale, Bitwise, and Canary Capital already launched XRP ETFs. Canary even recorded $245 million in first-day volume, which is impressive until you realise Franklin Templeton has access to 13,000+ advisory firms that collectively manage trillions in "my financial advisor made me diversify" money.
When Franklin launches an ETF, it doesn't just go to crypto Twitter – it goes to insurance allocators, university endowments, and that RIA who still explains Bitcoin using the word "blockchain" like it's 2016. These are people who thought Ethereum was too risky. Now they're buying XRP. Let that sink in.
The ticker is EZRP (because YOLO was taken), and it charges just 0.19% annually. Franklin is even waiving fees on the first $5 billion through May 2026, which in asset management terms means "we're buying market share and we don't care what it costs."
Great question! While Bitcoin is digital gold and Ethereum powers DeFi casinos, XRP is the token banks use when they're tired of SWIFT taking three days to move money between countries. Ripple's network processes $1.3 trillion in cross-border payments quarterly, settles transactions in 3-5 seconds, and costs fractions of a cent per transaction.
In other words, XRP is what happens when blockchain tries to solve actual problems instead of creating new ways to trade monkey JPEGs. Banks like Santander, SBI Holdings, and American Express actually use this thing. Revolutionary concept, I know.
Ripple even launched a stablecoin called RLUSD (creative naming committee clearly took the day off) and applied for actual banking charters with the OCC. They're not trying to disrupt finance—they're trying to become finance. Which is either brilliantly pragmatic or a betrayal of crypto's anarchist roots, depending on who you ask on Twitter at 2am.
Let's address the obvious: XRP's price moves like it's had six espressos. A 14% weekly swing is considered a "quiet week." This is not ideal for pension fund managers whose idea of excitement is when the 10-year Treasury moves 5 basis points.
Also, XRP still faces competition from central bank digital currencies, Layer 2 networks, and that one guy at every fintech conference who insists Lightning Network will make everything obsolete. Plus, there's the lingering awkwardness that institutional XRP sales remain classified as securities, creating a regulatory maze that makes tax code look straightforward.
But here's the thing: JPMorgan estimates XRP ETFs could attract $8 billion. Even if half that materialises, it's real institutional money flowing into a token that crypto purists love to hate and XRP fans defend with religious fervor. The fact that Franklin Templeton – a firm that wouldn't touch this asset with a 10-foot pole two years ago – is now actively marketing it to conservative wealth managers tells you everything about how fast the landscape is changing.
Franklin's XRP ETF is testing a hypothesis: Can traditional finance get excited about crypto that isn't just "number go up" speculation? If institutions actually allocate based on XRP's payment utility and Ripple's banking partnerships, it validates the idea that crypto can be boring infrastructure instead of just volatile speculation.
If XRP succeeds here, expect a flood of utility-token ETFs. Solana for transaction throughput! Cardano for governance! Polkadot for... whatever Polkadot does! (Seriously, can someone explain Polkadot? I've read the whitepaper three times.)
The alternative is that XRP remains a trading sardine – passed around by speculators but never actually consumed for its intended purpose. In which case, Franklin Templeton will have very awkward conversations with the 13,000 advisory firms it just convinced to pitch this to clients.
Your uncle was wrong about XRP in 2017. He was wrong in 2020. He was definitely wrong in 2023. But in 2025? He might finally have a point. Not because XRP is the perfect cryptocurrency, but because Franklin Templeton decided it's respectable enough for institutional portfolios.
Whether that's a sign of crypto's maturation or traditional finance's capitulation to FOMO is above my pay grade. What I do know is that we've officially entered the timeline where billion-dollar asset managers are launching ETFs for tokens that started as "hey, what if we made banking faster?"
The future is weird. At least the fees are low.