I just came across an interesting market phenomenon and want to discuss it with everyone. Ripple spent $750 million to repurchase shares, and its valuation is now aiming to reach $50 billion—seemingly very impressive. But the issue is that XRP’s price performance has kept falling. Recently, it even broke below the key support level of $1.80 and at one point dipped to $1.50. That’s pretty outrageous—while the company is doing buybacks to boost its market value, the token is going down.
I’ve noticed a very realistic question behind this: where does Ripple’s buyback funding come from? There’s a fairly sensitive speculation in the market that the company may be heavily selling its own XRP reserves to finance the buyback. If that’s true, it creates a weird loop: the company uses the money from selling tokens to increase its equity value, while token holders have to pay the price of the declining token value. This is what’s known as the “see-saw effect.”
Based on on-chain data, the sentiment among current XRP holders is already very bad. A large number of addresses are in a loss position, especially after the deep adjustment of more than 16% in February. Every rebound has become an opportunity to flee rather than a reason to hold. The number of addresses holding XRP is now more than 7.84 million, but activity is declining. The current XRP price is $1.48, the 24-hour change is positive at 3.27%, and the circulating market cap is $9.171 billion. But behind these figures is the gradually disappearing confidence among holders.
There’s a deeper problem here: why is there such a disconnect between Ripple’s growth as a company and the value of XRP as a token? In traditional stock markets, when a company makes money, its stock tends to rise. But with Ripple, it’s different. Legally, XRP is not defined as a security; it does not represent ownership in the company, and it has no right to dividends. Its value depends entirely on its real-world application in the RippleNet payment network, market liquidity, and pure speculative demand.
That means: no matter how good Ripple’s business is, if the market demand for XRP as a cross-border settlement tool is insufficient—or if more efficient competitors appear—XRP’s price will still fall on its own. Conversely, even if XRP rises due to hype, if Ripple’s company revenue and profits don’t genuinely grow, its equity value may also stagnate. This is the “company-token paradox” in the crypto market.
I feel that many people are mixing up one thing right now: are you investing in Ripple, the company that may go public in the future, or are you investing in XRP, this specific token? These are two completely different logics. The former looks at the company’s technology, team, and business contracts; the latter focuses on the token’s actual utility in the network and the market’s speculative sentiment.
In the future, Ripple and XRP will face three major tests. First is regulatory risk. Although Ripple has won the lawsuit with the SEC, the global regulatory environment is still very complex. Second is the need to prove that XRP is not just Ripple’s “lab experiment,” but a truly indispensable part of the global payment system—this requires broader adoption by more mainstream financial institutions. Third is the market patience test. Crypto market cycles are getting shorter, and investors’ attention can shift easily. If XRP can’t keep up with Ripple’s growth pace over the long term, capital and attention will flow to other public chains or payment tokens.
So for investors, the most important thing right now is to clarify one question: are you optimistic about Ripple, a tech company that might go public in the future, or are you optimistic about XRP, a specific payment token? Once you get clear on that, you can understand why buybacks can push up the company’s valuation, but XRP’s price is still taking its own path.
