XRP ETFs Hit $1B AUM, But The ‘Vanity Metric’ Hides A $1.88 Price Ceiling
XRP ETFs crossed $1 billion in assets, but with price stuck at $1.88 (-49% from ATH), the data exposes a critical gap between AUM headlines and net buying pressure.
XRP spot ETFs have officially crossed $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) across five issuers, a milestone reached faster than any altcoin fund since Ethereum. Yet, the price tells a different story: XRP trades at $1.88, down 49% from its July 2025 all-time high of $3.65. The divergence reveals a critical flaw in how the market interprets institutional demand: AUM is a stock metric, but price moves on flow.
The ‘Pipe’ Problem
The headline number, $1.14 billion spread across issuers like Canary Capital and Bitwise, masks the inefficiency of the inflows. While total assets grew, net buying pressure has not matched the pace of share issuance. Data indicates net inflows since November hover near $423 million, suggesting nearly 60% of that ‘billion-dollar’ figure stems from asset rotation or recycling rather than fresh capital injections.
The true lever for price impact is the pace and persistence of net creations, when fresh cash forces authorized participants to source underlying XRP.
Unless Authorized Participants (APs) are stripping real supply from the ledger to create new redemption units, high AUM figures remain nothing more than a scorecard. Currently, the pipes are routing volume, not squeezing supply.
Institutional Context: Vanguard’s Shadow
This stagnation occurs despite a massive structural shift: Vanguard’s reversal in December 2025 to allow spot crypto ETF trading. While this opened the floodgates for retirement accounts, the immediate effect has been liquidity dispersion rather than a vertical price repricing. The market expected a God Candle; it got a stablecoin-like consolidation at $1.80.
Traders watching the $1.88 support level should ignore the billion-dollar headlines and watch the daily creation units. Until those spikes correlate with exchange outflows, the ETF accumulation remains a passive holding game, not a price catalyst.
