Imagine this: you are calmly scrolling through your X feed, waiting for another photo of a cat or a bodybuilder telling you that 'discipline is freedom.'
And suddenly, BAM! Brad Garlinghouse, the head of Ripple, reports that the XRP ETF has raised over a billion dollars in just four weeks.
Billion.
And all this without dancing, drums, candle burning, and shamanic rituals at the SEC, which in itself is already surprising.
And here you are sitting and thinking: 'What’s happening?'
XRP is the new star of crypto-ETF: nothing has grown this fast since ETH.
Yes, that's right: XRP became the fastest cryptocurrency to reach the milestone of $1 billion AUM since the launch of the ETF on Ethereum.
It’s like if a guy in school, who people said ‘well, I don’t know… seems normal’, suddenly became the captain of the basketball team and even won the championship.
And now everyone pretends they believed in it from the very beginning.
Further is better.
America 2025: the country of ETFs, or 'if you can hang a ticker on something, we’ll do it.'
In 2025, the USA released more than 40 cryptocurrency ETFs.
This is not regulation; this is already a crypto smorgasbord.
Want some Bitcoin?
Take a plate.
Ether?
Please.
XRP?
Take two while it’s hot.
And all this is thanks to the fact that investors are simple people.
They don’t want to memorize seed phrases of 24 words that sound like spells from 'Harry Potter'.
They want to hit the ‘buy’ button in their retirement account and go have coffee.
Vanguard opened the doors to crypto and millions of 'ordinary people' rushed inside.
Here comes Vanguard and says:
'Alright, enough jokes. Want to trade crypto through retirement and regular brokerage accounts?'
Here’s your door. Don’t mention it.
And millions of people who once thought that XRP was a brand of Japanese motorcycle suddenly gained access to crypto with one click.
So what do they choose?
No, not the new meme-token 'ShibaPoodleAI420'.
They choose regulated ETFs because:
✔ stability
✔ convenience
✔ community
✔ and surprise, the lack of need to understand how blockchain works.
And Garlinghouse directly says: off-chain holders value stability and community.
And it’s funny: traditional investors come to crypto… to have a less crypto experience.
Why this story is much more than the success of XRP.
If we set aside sarcasm, here’s what we get:
Institutions are hungry.
Investors overwhelmingly want crypto, but in a regulated, convenient form.
ETFs are becoming a bridge between 'crypto for the chosen' and 'crypto for everyone'.
XRP showed that if you give people a simple and understandable product, they will bring money faster than the SEC can find a new reason for investigation.
The bottom line?
XRP did what many did not expect: entered the top league of crypto-ETFs and did it rapidly.
And if this is the beginning of a new trend, in a couple of years we might see ETFs on everything:
ETFs on metaverse tokens that no one enters.
ETFs on tokens that promise a revolution every year since 2017.
ETFs on ETFs on cryptocurrencies (and yes, Wall Street will go for it).
But one thing is clear: crypto has ceased to be an underground subculture and is becoming part of the financial mainstream, whether someone likes it or not.
Even if this mainstream is a 60-year-old uncle who hears the word 'XRP' for the first time, but already holds it in his retirement portfolio.
