XRP Surges 1.21% as CME Futures Launch Drives Institutional Interest

XRP's latest price was $2.19, up 1.21% in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has seen significant market interest and strong engagement from both institutional and retail traders. This interest is highlighted by the launch of XRP and Micro XRP futures on the Chicago-based financial derivatives giant, which witnessed significant market interest and strong engagement from institutions and individual retail traders. These new XRP-based financial products got off to a strong start, registering a total trading volume on their first trading day. The demand dramatically increased as volume spiked over the first month. The CME’s standard and micro contracts, sized at 50,000 XRP and 2,500 XRP, respectively, are cash-settled and based on the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference rate, which tracks the price of the fourth-largest crypto daily at 4:00 p.m. London time. These futures allow traders to gain exposure to XRP without actually owning it. The data also suggests strong international participation in the futures market, with roughly half of the activity coming from outside the US and Canada. The successful rollout of CFTC-regulated XRP futures is seen as a significant stepping stone for the eventual approval of a spot-based exchange-traded fund by the SEC.

In a groundbreaking move for blockchain adoption in institutional finance, the European Central Bank (ECB) has officially acknowledged the XRP Ledger as the core infrastructure powering Axiology’s distributed ledger trading and settlement system (DLT TSS). This development positions XRP at the heart of a potential future standard for digital bond issuance and settlement across Europe. As part of the ECB’s broader exploration into tokenized finance, Axiology participated in the Eurosystem’s interoperability testing under Category 1, which focused on the primary issuance of bonds by financial institutions, corporates, and sovereigns. The platform was tested for its ability to manage end-to-end debt lifecycle operations, including issuance, delivery-versus-payment (DVP) settlement, coupon payments, and maturity redemption. Axiology’s DLT TSS operates as a private, permissioned infrastructure built using the open-source XRP Ledger, yet it functions independently of Ripple. This setup enables robust asset tokenization, high-speed settlement, and compliance-oriented design, making it suitable for regulated financial markets. The ECB document outlines a detailed, real-world scenario for the primary issuance and settlement of debt securities using a wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) on Axiology’s platform. The process begins with a broker submitting auction results through an API, triggering the creation of an escrow wallet for each distribution entry. The XRP Ledger facilitates payments, with the node using XRP Payment transactions to move funds between issuer and investor wallets. Each transaction includes detailed metadata: the investor’s wallet address, charge amount, and transfer instructions. Once the payment leg succeeds, the system finalizes the DVP by releasing funds from the escrow wallet to the investor, again using XRP. This design ensures atomic settlement and eliminates reconciliation errors, a longstanding inefficiency in traditional bond markets. One of the most impressive aspects of Axiology’s system is its robust compliance architecture. The platform integrates Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, addresses market integrity and investor protection, and uses on-chain consensus-driven processes to eliminate the need for complex bilateral agreements. The use of a DLT-native escrow and XRP-based payments provides a tamper-proof audit trail, minimizing settlement risk and enabling regulatory oversight. The ECB praises Axiology’s ability to reduce operational overhead and human error while maintaining interoperability with other financial market infrastructures, such as European payment systems and custodial networks. The ECB’s inclusion of XRP Ledger in this official experimentation marks a major endorsement of XRP’s technological capability in real-world financial applications. While Axiology remains a sandbox model, the demonstration of XRP’s role in executing and securing institutional-grade transactions under ECB oversight is a compelling proof-of-concept. As Bull Diep emphasized in his viral post, this is not just speculation; it’s concrete evidence that XRP is moving from the periphery to the core of future financial systems. With Europe now experimenting with XRP-based DLT infrastructure for sovereign debt issuance, the path to regulatory legitimacy and mainstream adoption for XRP has never looked clearer.

Ripple is set to release 1 billion XRP tokens from its escrow account on July 1, 2025. This is part of a routine monthly schedule the company has followed since 2017. As the escrow system “remains unchanged” and proceeds according to its usual monthly schedule, Ripple is adhering to the standard pattern of a 1 billion XRP escrow release. Each month, Ripple releases 1 billion XRP. But they do not put all of it into usage. For instance, in June 2025, Ripple released 1 billion XRP and subsequently returned approximately 670 million into escrow. Roughly 330 million XRP were retained to be used or put into circulation. Ripple does this to manage how much XRP is in circulation. Typically, 60–70% of the issued tokens get locked up again, whereas only 30–40% are spent on company bills, collaborations, or to assist with liquidity (making it simpler to sell and purchase XRP). There were rumors online in late June 2025 saying the U.S. government might take Ripple’s escrowed XRP to use as part of a national crypto reserve. Such rumors were not true. The rumor was publicly denied by Ripple’s lawyer, and no supporting evidence was found. Additionally, Ripple co-founder Arthur Britto broke a 14-year silence with a cryptic emoji post on X, sparking intense speculation in the XRP community.