XRP Flips BTC, Ethereum and Solana in ETF Inflows, Bitcoin Hits 3,436% Liquidation Imbalance, Shiba Inu (SHIB) Price Sees Golden Cross — Crypto News Digest

Despite a mixed performance throughout 2025, XRP has emerged as one of the standout performers in the cryptocurrency market. Currently trading slightly below $1.90, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency has retraced nearly 50% from its all-time highs achieved in July. 

Nevertheless, Standard Chartered is optimistic about XRP’s future, forecasting a significant upward trend driven by anticipated inflows into spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and increased regulatory clarity.

Spot XRP ETFs Could Drive $4-$8 Billion In Inflows 

The bank predicts that the launch of spot XRP ETFs could bring in between $4 billion and $8 billion into XRP throughout 2026. Should these inflows materialize, the resulting demand—coupled with XRP’s relatively limited supply—could catalyze a sharp increase in the coin’s price. 

Analyst Geoffrey Kendrick has laid out an ambitious roadmap for XRP’s future, anticipating prices of $8.00 in 2026, and potentially reaching $12.50 by 2028.

To put this into perspective, XRP’s current circulating supply is approximately 57 billion coins. Even modest inflows of a few billion dollars could create a meaningful supply shock in the market. 

So far, XRP ETFs have gathered around $1.25 billion. To reach the $8 target, it would require annual flows to hit the range of $5 billion to $10 billion, similar to the initial enthusiasm surrounding Bitcoin ETFs.

Regulatory Resolution As Key Catalyst 

A parallel factor influencing XRP’s potential rise is the resolution of regulatory uncertainty surrounding the cryptocurrency. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) long-standing lawsuit against Ripple Labs has significantly impacted XRP’s narrative. 

Yet, in August 2025, the SEC withdrew its appeal, resulting in Ripple agreeing to a $125 million settlement and affirming that XRP sales on secondary markets are not classified as securities transactions. 

This resolution eliminates a substantial legal burden and is seen by Standard Chartered as a catalyst for increased adoption. With legal uncertainties removed, capital that had been sidelined could finally enter the market.

However, for XRP to achieve a price of $8 by 2026, favorable economic conditions, including low interest rates and a risk-on attitude among investors, would be critical. Should macroeconomic challenges escalate, investors may shy away from altcoins.

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

In the evolving landscape, the narrative around XRP’s real use case is increasingly standing out in a market often driven by speculation. The altcoin is embedded in live financial workflows, particularly in cross-border payments and liquidity management. Its role as a bridge asset allows institutions to move value quickly, cheaply, and at scale, solving real inefficiencies in the global payments system.

Why XRP Functions As A Bridge Asset In Global Payments

This design choice is centered on understanding why its utility will drive price appreciation. An analyst known as SMQKE revealed on X that the core of this model is payment utility. XRP is designed to operate within the global payment infrastructure, and Ripple has integrated with existing financial systems to enhance speed, reduce costs, and improve settlement efficiency.

Through Ripple’s integrations, financial institutions adopt the network, and the altcoin is utilized directly to move value across borders. From a price perspective, this document outlines how institutional settlement activity has created a sustainable demand for XRP, supporting price appreciation through real transaction flow.

Analyst Vet has highlighted the areas where XRP and the XRP Ledger were great in 2025. One is smart contracts, and a significant amount of development went into getting the alpha testnet live, where individuals can currently deploy and play around with it. Community awareness toward this also increased meaningfully.

On the DeFi front, momentum came out strongly from late 2024, especially driven by meme coins. However, the activity dried out over the year. Baseline DEX activity is now higher than it was before the DeFi wave, but this raises the potential for more growth in 2026. 

Furthermore, interoperability has made tangible progress as Wormhole went live, Axelar live became operational, and yield-bearing issued assets were bridged onto the XRPL. Currently, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) appear to be a key enabler for trust-minimized bridging.

On the application side, existing XRPL projects and wallets doubled down. Apps became more polished, with new feature-rich and better integrations, while no new app took over the community. 

At the same time, tokenization stood out as one of the strongest verticals. RLUSD was a major milestone, complemented by smaller launches of other stablecoins and tokenized funds. The distribution channel of these assets needs a lot of work, which directly ties back to application-layer development. That’s why this year should be viewed as the foundation for 2026.

How Fee Destruction Changes Economic Incentives

Ripple’s XRP is designed to compete in low-fee markets and has built programmable economics. According to Xfinancebull, every transaction fee is destroyed; it is not paid to validators, no middleman, and there is no inflation loop.

This is because XRPL is designed to scale global payment rails, not enrich toll collectors. That’s why XRP is one of the few chains where volume is value, not congestion. Xfinancebull stated that this isn’t a trading feature, but it’s a monetary policy shift hidden at the protocol layer.

The digital asset sector is closing out a turbulent quarter marked by losses, strained market infrastructure and investor disappointment. Yet one corner of the market stood out: privacy-focused cryptocurrencies.

According to Grayscale’s latest quarterly market summary, privacy emerged as an unexpected investment theme in the fourth quarter, with assets such as Zcash (ZEC) significantly outperforming the broader crypto market. 

Zcash’s price surged in the fourth quarter, rising from about $50 in mid-September to a peak near $700 by mid-November, CoinMarketCap data shows.

The performance coincided with a sharp increase in Zcash’s use of shielded addresses, which conceal transaction details such as the sender, recipient and amount.

As noted by VanEck's Matthew Sigel, Bitcoin's long-term holders have turned into net accumulators. This likely means that their largest selling spree since 2019 is likely over. 

Earlier today, the leading cryptocurrency spiked to an intraday high of $89,201, CoinGecko data shows. 

A major sell pressure event 

The chart shared by Sigel measures the 30-day change in the supply held by Long-Term Holders. In on-chain analysis, an LTH is typically defined as an entity that has held coins for 155 days or more.

When the bars are blue and above the zero line, LTHs are buying and locking away coins. This usually happens during bear markets or price dips. Conversely, when the bars are red and below the zero line, LTHs are selling their coins into the market. This usually happens during bull markets when prices are high.

LTHs tend to do the opposite of the retail crowd. They buy when everyone is fearful and sell when everyone is greedy.

The arrow indicates that the period of heavy profit-taking by LTHs is essentially over. They have finished selling the inventory they intended to offload at these price levels.

When LTHs stop selling, a massive source of sell-side pressure is removed from the market. If demand remains constant or increases, there is more potential for a substantial rally since there are fewer "whale" sellers suppressing the price.

During previous cycles, a return to the zero line after heavy selling often marks a consolidation phase or a transition back into accumulation.

Bitcoin is so far down 5.19% on a year-to-date basis. Every year that the flagship cryptocurrency has had a red yearly candle, the following year has been green with an average yearly return of 124.5%.

That said, as noted by Mike Novogratz, Bitcoin bulls first would have to reclaim the $100,000 level for Bitcoin to flip bullish. 

Nasdaq-listed Cypherpunk Technologies has expanded its crypto corporate treasury with a new purchase of Zcash tokens for about $29 million.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, the company bought 56,418 Zcash (ZEC) paying an average price of $514 per token. The purchase brings Cypherpunk’s total holdings to 290,062.67 ZEC, or about 1.76% of the token’s circulating supply.

Zcash, launched in 2016 as a Bitcoin fork, is a privacy-focused blockchain that uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify transactions without revealing the sender, recipient or transaction amount. Like Bitcoin, its native token has a 21 million cap.

According to Cypherpunk's chief investment officer, Will McEvoy, the company aims to accumulate 5% of the total ZEC supply and it is “well positioned for a market that is repricing the societal importance of privacy.”

Formerly a biotech company called Leap Therapeutics, the company rebranded in November as Cypherpunk Technologies, as a Zcash-focused digital asset company. The company’s stock has surged almost 170% to about $1.18 at time of writing, from $0.44 before it rebranded, according to Google Finance data.

Cypherpunk is backed by Winkevoss Capital, the venture capital firm of Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

BitMine, the world’s biggest Ethereum treasury, chaired by Tom Lee, has added more Ethereum tokens to its rapidly expanding Ethereum treasury despite growing uncertainties across the crypto market.

Following recent Ethereum purchases identified from the platform, it appears that BitMine has not relented on its long-term conviction in Ethereum after acquiring $132 million worth of ETH over the past week, according to on-chain data from blockchain intelligence platform Arkham.

BitMine surpasses $12 billion milestone 

While BitMine has continued its aggressive Ethereum buying spree, its latest purchase has seen the treasury reach a massive $12.24 billion.

While the firm also boasts holding about $1 billion in cash, it has sufficient resources to continue accumulating Ethereum while expanding its large Ethereum treasury.

The data showcased by the source revealed a steady withdrawal of large amounts of ETH into BitMine-associated wallets over the past week, with individual transfers ranging from 15,000 to 28,000 ETH per transaction.

While the data further showed that some of the transfers were moved through Ethereum’s BatchDeposit contract, it appears that BitMine has moved a portion of the funds for staking purposes.

BitMine's treasury nears 4% of ETH supply

Following its consistent accumulation of Ethereum, even during periods of high volatility, BitMine now controls about 3.39% of Ethereum’s total circulating supply, positioning the firm as the largest holder of Ethereum and a major force that can easily influence the asset’s market movement.

While BitMine now holds $12.24 billion in its treasury, the firm would need to purchase an additional $2.2 billion worth of ETH at current prices to hit the major 4% Ethereum ownership target, according to analysis provided by the source.

With its consistency in regular Ethereum purchases, coupled with the $1 billion held in cash and the firm’s sufficient liquidity position, BitMine is expected to hit the 4% threshold in the near future.

Following BitMine’s aggressive purchases, Ethereum has returned to the positive trading side, showing a decent increase of 1.53% over the last day while trading at $2,980 as of writing time.