Author
David Pokima
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Institutional custodian Hex Trust announced the launch of Wrapped XRP (wXRP) on Thursday, deploying the token across Ethereum, Solana, Optimism, and HyperEVM with $100 million in initial liquidity.
The move aims to anchor Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin pairs on EVM chains. XRP remained flat on the news, while RLUSD supply held steady at 1.3 billion.
The Signal: XRP Liquidity vs. Security
Hex Trust’s wXRP enters a crowded market already fragmented by Coinbase’s cbXRP and Axelar’s eXRP. The $100 million seed capital is intended to support trading pairs immediately, thereby eliminating the “cold start” problem that typically accompanies new wrapped assets.
The structure is a standard 1:1 custodial model: Hex Trust holds the native XRP; users get the IOU. While this enables DeFi composability, it reintroduces the single point of failure—the custodian—that the XRP Ledger was built to eliminate.
The Risk Vector
The timing is precarious. Bridge and custodian exploits were the culprit behind over 50% of all crypto losses in the first half of 2025. By moving XRP off its native ledger, holders swap protocol security for smart contract risk.
Hex Trust attempts to mitigate this via LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard, which theoretically reduces attack surfaces compared to traditional “lock-and-mint” bridges. Yet, the big prize for hackers remains: $100 million sitting in a single custodial wallet.
The Institutional Take: Can XRP Really go to Zero?
While the headline is the $100M liquidity, the real story is the fragmentation of XRP liquidity. We now have three major synthetic XRP variants (cbXRP, eXRP, wXRP) competing for the same DeFi flows.
For desks, this creates arbitrage opportunities but fractures deep liquidity. Expect spreads to widen across these variants until a clear winner emerges. The real risk isn’t the wrapper—it’s the bridge. If the Hex Trust multisig is compromised, wXRP goes to zero, regardless of the underlying asset’s health.
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