In a new video titled “Why Aren’t Institutions Adopting XRP Massively?,” Jake Claver, founder and CEO of Digital Ascension Group, argues that the absence of headline-grabbing institutional flows into XRP has less to do with the asset’s technical fitness and more to do with regulatory, operational and coordination realities that govern how large financial entities deploy new market infrastructure.
Claver frames the paradox succinctly: XRP’s performance characteristics are, in his view, tailor-made for modern payments, yet banks remain publicly cautious. “XRP could solve banks biggest problems… it’s faster, it’s cheaper, and it’s a lot more reliable than Swift,” he says, before posing the central question: “Why aren’t they adopting it yet?” His answer is not that institutions are uninterested, but that their playbook prizes legal certainty, timing and stealthy execution over visible, price-moving buys.
Why Wall Street Hasn’t Gone All-In On XRP (Yet)
A core pillar of his thesis is that institutions, when they do build positions, typically do so through execution algorithms and off-exchange channels designed to minimize market impact. “They’re using T-W and VWAP strategies,” he says, referring to time-weighted and volume-weighted average price execution. In practice, he adds, that means mandates along the lines of “‘I’ve got $100 million. I want to buy XRP… I’ll just average into the market over a month, two months, 6 months.’” The point, according to Claver, is to accumulate size “without causing those big price spikes,” often by relying on algorithmic execution, OTC desks or dark pools rather than simply sweeping public order books. Retail investors, he notes, rarely see this flow because it is engineered not to be seen.
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Regulation is the second pillar. Claver contends that global institutions cannot anchor a “trillion dollar payment infrastructure on uncertain legal foundations or tax foundations.” He points to the July 13, 2023 ruling in the SEC’s case against Ripple, saying Judge Analisa Torres “stated that XRP in and of itself is not a security,” and argues that the combination of court developments and a changing US regulatory posture has begun to thaw institutional reluctance. “We’re seeing the transition from apprehensions… to okay, maybe this stuff will actually work,” he says, while also cautioning that lingering case milestones and appellate formalities still matter for the largest issuers and product sponsors.
Claver repeatedly emphasizes that institutions are relatively indifferent to the exact price level at which they obtain exposure if they are convinced of the strategic direction. “They’re perfectly happy to be buying XRP at $100, $1,000, or even $10,000 because they know that it’s going to be going higher,” he claims, drawing an analogy to Bitcoin, where “institutions didn’t start buying and aggregating Bitcoin till it was $30,000, $40,000, $50,000,” and noting that “MicroStrategy at $72,000 per Bitcoin is their average buy.” The contention, controversial as it may be, is that sophisticated buyers optimize for timing, liquidity and coordination, not for nailing the bottom tick.
In the near term, he argues, episodic price spikes tied to headlines remain “speculative,” precisely because retail “doesn’t have the capital” or the “coordination to maintain the level of volume that would be needed for high prices.” Sustained re-rating, in his telling, requires institutional catalysts: regulatory green lights, product launches and real-world usage. “We need catalysts. We need real-world adoption and a crisis, I think a liquidity crisis, for them to actually pull this into vogue,” he says, describing a potential “supply shock” in XRP as the kind of event that could force rapid repricing.
What To Watch In The Coming Months
Claver also sketches a backdrop of what he characterizes as accelerating but largely “behind the scenes” integration work. He cites “almost 300 partnerships globally for Ripple,” references bank proofs-of-concept and pilots that have surfaced “over the years,” and points to CBDC and stablecoin experimentation involving jurisdictions such as Palau, Bhutan, Montenegro, Georgia and Colombia. He argues that this long tail of trials is consistent with how critical financial plumbing is typically upgraded: slowly, cautiously and only after extensive testing. “They’re not just going to do that on a whim,” he says. “They have to be very thorough.”
On the product side, Claver highlight that many of the futures ETFs have already gotten through, and references a “listing… from the DTCC on the [spot] XRP ETF for Canary Capital,” which he characterizes as “normally the step right before the S-1s would be approved.” He frames late-2025 as a plausible window for approvals, adding, “we are seeing concrete institutional interest and accelerating the adoption of this asset,” though he acknowledges much of it is not yet apparent in headline price action.
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Another throughline is the institutional decision-making cadence. Claver portrays the present as a “final preparation phase before full-bore adoption,” where regulatory clarity is “emerging,” technical infrastructure is “proven,” and “strategic partnerships are in place,” with the “remaining variable” being “coordinated activation across multiple institutions simultaneously.” He even suggests broader payment-system migrations—such as adoption of global messaging standards—create the preconditions for real-time settlement layers, a category where he situates XRP’s potential role.
Retail Vs. Institutions
Claver’s take on supply dynamics challenges a popular community narrative that retail holdings could meaningfully impede institutional entry. He argues that retail’s slice of circulating XRP is small in system terms: “they might hold, I don’t know, 2 billion, 3 billion XRP of the available supply… around, you know, 52 billion.” The implication, he says, is that institutions are unlikely to be “worried about retail competition,” because they can “acquire it later on through private markets or private sales” at higher prices if necessary. “There’s really enough supply for everybody here,” he maintains, adding that institutions “aren’t going to care if retail makes a bunch of money in this transition.”
Throughout, Claver counsels retail viewers to recognize the structural nature of what he believes is taking shape. “You’re investing in infrastructure,” he says, framing digital assets like XRP as bearer instruments that let the public “own the infrastructure and the backend” of a prospective payments transition “before it’s actually deployed.” He concedes that this view runs counter to strands of crypto ideology—“decentralized, against the man, down with the banks”—but makes a pragmatic case: “I personally would rather just stack my pennies next to the institutions’ dollars and ride their coattails.”
The video ends with a characteristic disclaimer—“None of this is financial advice”—alongside a reiteration of his conviction: “All my eggs are in this basket,” Claver says, arguing that institutional adoption of blockchain settlement rails represents “one of the largest infrastructure transitions in financial history.” In Claver’s telling, the question isn’t whether institutions will adopt technologies that solve for speed, cost and reliability, but when they will flip from preparation to activation—and how quickly the market will reprice once that coordination point arrives.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.85.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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