Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced on March 27 that the company is heading for a record first quarter. Prime brokerage revenue has tripled since the Hidden Road acquisition, Fortune 500 treasury teams are running on Ripple’s infrastructure through GTreasury, and the total processed payment volume has crossed $100 billion. By every measure, this should be good news for XRP (CRYPTO: XRP)—Ripple is having its best stretch ever—but the XRP price dropped 23.7% over the same quarter, and is hovering around $1.34.
The disconnect between Ripple’s business performance and the XRP price has become one of the most frustrating dynamics for the asset. We had a thorough look to identify why Ripple’s wins don’t impact XRP. The reasons behind it say a lot about what actually drives token prices versus what drives company revenue.
What Made Ripple’s Q1 a Record?
Ripple spent roughly $3 billion on acquisitions in 2025, and Q1 2026 is the first full quarter where that investment is showing real returns. The biggest contributor is Ripple Prime, the prime brokerage arm built from the $1.25 billion Hidden Road acquisition. Hidden Road clears around $3 trillion a year for over 300 institutional clients, and since the deal closed, that division’s revenue has tripled. The second driver is Ripple Treasury, formerly GTreasury, which Ripple bought for $1 billion to give Fortune 500 treasury teams a way to move funds in one minute instead of five days.
Beyond the revenue growth, Ripple is valued at $50 billion through a $750 million share buyback on March 11. This marks a 25% jump from its $40 billion valuation just four months earlier, during a stretch where the broader crypto market lost over 40% of its value. RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin, has also grown to a $1.56 billion market cap since launching in December 2024.
Garlinghouse called XRP the company’s “northstar” and said every product Ripple builds is focused on driving utility around XRP and the XRP Ledger. But as of now, the XRP price has yet to reflect any of Ripple’s success.
Why Didn’t Ripple’s Record Quarter Help the XRP Price?
The key differentiating factor is that Ripple as a company is separate from the XRP token. So, owning XRP doesn’t give you a piece of Ripple. As Ripple Prime tripled its brokerage revenue, the money goes to Ripple’s equity holders—and Ripple is a private company valued at $50 billion that you can’t buy shares in.
That distinction is why the company got 25% more valuable between November 2025 and March 2026, while XRP’s value dropped over 60% from its cycle high. Every dollar Ripple earns from Hidden Road, GTreasury, and Rail stays on Ripple’s balance sheet, and doesn’t impact XRP at all.
Deutsche Bank, Aviva Investors, and Société Générale all started using Ripple’s infrastructure in February 2026, and XRP dropped roughly 30% in the same month. Banks are using Ripple for faster cross-border payments and settlement, but they’re settling in RLUSD and fiat currencies, not XRP. RLUSD has grown to $1.56 billion in market cap with 88% of its supply on Ethereum, with only a merger of 12% on Ripple’s own XRPL.
These all point to one thing: Ripple doesn’t incorporate XRP enough into its offerings and solutions. The root cause is that XRP has no sufficient use case in dealings that generate revenue for Ripple. And as long as that continues, Ripple’s wins won’t have any meaningful impact on the XRP price.
What Would Actually Move the XRP Price?
Banks are using Ripple’s software, but they’re not settling in or using XRP enough to create any meaningful demand for the token. Until that changes, Ripple’s business growth and the XRP price will keep moving in opposite directions. The only Ripple product that creates actual buying and selling demand for XRP is On-Demand Liquidity, and ODL is still mostly used by remittance firms like Bitso in Latin America rather than the major banks.
One thing that could open the door for large scale XRP adoption is the Clarity Act. Garlinghouse said on March 27 that he still expects the bill to pass, but stated the timeline could extend from the end of April to the end of May. If it passes, U.S. banks get a permanent legal framework for stablecoins, which removes the last compliance barrier keeping most institutions from running ODL corridors with XRP.
That’s the missing piece that would turn Ripple’s infrastructure into actual XRP demand—and until that happens, the disconnect between the company’s success and the token’s price isn’t going anywhere.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks