I’m back from Ripple’s Swell Conference in New York, held this year at Hudson Yards, right next to BlackRock’s headquarters. That choice of venue matched the tone in the room. Maxwell Stein from BlackRock’s digital assets team said plainly that the market is ready for large-scale blockchain adoption, and pointed to Ripple’s infrastructure as rails that could move trillions on-chain.
A $500 million raise that doesn’t need the cash
Ripple just closed a $500 million raise at a $40 billion valuation, with Fortress, Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace all writing checks. The obvious question: why raise money when Ripple already holds a balance sheet worth far more than $40 billion? As of the most recent disclosure from Brad Garlinghouse, that balance sheet included $4.8 billion in cash, $40.1 billion in XRP (split between liquid and escrowed holdings), and 163.5 million fully diluted shares. Add it up and you’re well past $100 billion in underlying value, against a $40 billion valuation. That’s roughly a third of net asset value. If you stripped out the operating businesses entirely, payments, custody, Prime, stablecoins, and just looked at the XRP holdings, you’d still be looking at a multiple of the company’s price tag.
Compare that to MicroStrategy, which has historically traded at a premium to its Bitcoin holdings. If Ripple ever traded at a similar multiple to its XRP position, the valuation gap would be substantial. I’d treat any specific dollar figure here as a rough illustration of the math, not a forecast, since these multiples move with sentiment and aren’t guaranteed to repeat.
The businesses are growing too
This isn’t just a balance-sheet story. Ripple Payments has processed tens of billions in transactions, RLUSD passed a billion dollars in market cap in under a year, and Ripple Prime (formerly Hidden Road) has meaningfully grown its daily transaction volume and collateral base since being acquired. Garlinghouse has talked about targeting a meaningful share of Swift‘s payment volume by 2030, which would be a large revenue opportunity even at a conservative take rate.
Ripple has also been acquisitive, closing six deals in the past two years, including Hidden Road for prime brokerage, GT Treasury for corporate treasury management, plus Metaco and Palisade for custody infrastructure. That builds out a full stack: payments, tokenization, and custody under one roof, which tends to command a premium once institutions are plugged in and switching becomes expensive.
Reading the tender offer and the IPO question
Ripple ran a tender offer at $250 a share on the same $40 billion valuation, and it reportedly had the lowest participation rate the company has seen, meaning holders who could have sold at $250 largely chose not to. Separately, Ashish Birla, a former Ripple executive, raised over a billion dollars for Evernorth, an XRP treasury company expected to list on Nasdaq, with Ripple, Pantera, Kraken, and SBI Holdings among the investors and Chris Larsen, Garlinghouse, and David Schwartz signed on as advisors. That gives the market a public comparable for XRP exposure before Ripple itself ever files to go public.
At Swell, Monica Long said there’s no set IPO timeline, and Garlinghouse said Ripple plans to slow acquisitions over the next year to focus on scaling. Staying private a little longer gives them room to keep building without quarterly reporting pressure. My own view is that $40 billion looks more like a floor than a ceiling given the underlying assets and growing revenue base, but that’s a personal read on the numbers, not investment advice, and nothing here should be treated as a guarantee of future value.
Educational only, not tax, legal, or investment advice. Check primary sources and speak with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
