TL;DR

• Two of Ripple’s top executives answered a direct question about XRPL’s potential to capture a sizeable volume of the most adopted financial transactional system, SWIFT.
• If their prediction is to happen, the XRP Ledger could be processing billions of dollars worth of assets daily, which would definitely impact the native token’s price – but by how much?

14% of Swift’s Volume?

Responding to the question asked at the XRP Apex 2025 event in Singapore earlier this week, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said it’s important to distinguish SWIFT into two parts – messaging and liquidity. He focused on the second, as it could influence the XRP Ledger more since it is owned by the banks.

“I think less about the messaging and more about liquidity. If you are driving all the liquidity, it is good for XRP … so I will say in five years, 14%.”

Even if we remove the messaging part from this equation, SWIFT handles approximately $5 trillion in transactions per day, according to Statista’s conservative metrics. This puts the annual amount at around $1.25 quadrillion if we assume there are 250 business days yearly.

14% out of that mindblowing amount would result in a $175 trillion volume settled in Ripple’s cross-border token on its network annually, or $700 billion daily. Although not all value remains in XRP, the liquidity needed to ensure there are no delays should be at least $175 billion (daily) if one token is used around four times per day for settlements.

When we asked ChatGPT about XRP’s price potential in such a scenario, it responded that the asset could blow up to somewhere above $20 when we considered all narratives. The SWIFT volume, even though it would be a massive portion, would still complement everything else that goes on in the Ripple (XRP) ecosystem – staking, holding, network expansion, RLUSD adoption, potential ETF approvals, etc.

Ridiculous Predictions Time

While a price tag of $10 or even $20 sounds quite mindboggling as of now (current price – under $2.2), the XRP Army was even more bullish following Garlinghouse’s comments. Predictions started to fly in, outlining ridiculous targets for the future, including almost $1,500 per coin.

This #XRP bull flag has a $1,452.81 price target.

Do you believe in it? pic.twitter.com/pRFksuCe9V

— STEPH IS CRYPTO (@Steph_iscrypto) June 13, 2025

Some even brought up the aforementioned RLUSD adoption, which could also somehow push XRP’s price to the stratosphere.

It’s official: $RLUSD is set to trigger a guaranteed $1,250 price for $XRP! pic.twitter.com/RW0StcSHuv

— KingXRP (@MRKingXRP) June 13, 2025

However, investors should be aware that these targets are simply numbers that have little substance to back them up, for now at least. Before you start allocating funds to XRP expecting such massive price surges, please beware that $1,250 per XRP would mean that its market cap would be north of $67 trillion – that’s more than Bitcoin, Amazon, Apple, Google, and gold combined.

According to a new research report co-authored by Bitget, SlowMist, and Elliptic, over $4.6 billion was lost to scams in 2024 alone, a 24% increase from the previous year.

Deepfake AI impersonation, social engineering scams, and modern Ponzi schemes have emerged as the top threats to users.

The Most Common Frauds

The report revealed that nearly 40% of high-value frauds in 2024 involved deepfake technology. Scammers are using AI to create convincing videos of public figures like X owner Elon Musk promoting fake investments on social media platforms. In one high-profile case, Hong Kong police arrested 31 members of a syndicate that used AI-generated videos of various crypto executives to steal $34 million.

According to the survey, bad actors are also using AI to bypass KYC procedures, forge customer service chats, and simulate platform dashboards to fake legitimacy. Even Zoom meetings are being weaponized, with scammers sending fake invitations with links to malicious software.

Social engineering remains a major threat by exploiting people’s psychological vulnerabilities. This is being done through AI-powered arbitrage bot scams that promise easy profits through ChatGPT-generated code while directing users to interact with fake interfaces that steal their funds. Other common tactics include Trojan-laced job offers, phishing links in DMs and tweets, and address poisoning.

Additionally, modern Ponzi schemes continue to evolve, now appearing as legitimate decentralized finance (DeFi), NFT, and GameFi projects. The report cited the 2023 JPEX incident in Hong Kong, where the platform promoted itself as a “global cryptocurrency exchange,” using physical ads and celebrity endorsements to market its native JPC token, which supposedly had “high and stable returns.”

However, the platform did not have regulatory approval, leading to authorities tagging it as “highly suspicious.” A subsequent crackdown revealed over $213 million in losses from more than 2,600 complaints by aggrieved users.

Last year, blockchain investigator ZachXBT also exposed a scam network linked to several rug pulls, including Leaper Finance and Zebra Lending. Such rackets use forged KYC documents and fake audit reports to lure users before stealing funds right after the value of their phony tokens surges.

According to Bitget, modern digital swindles differ from traditional Ponzi schemes by incorporating more sophisticated elements. These include advanced “social fission” tactics that use messaging apps and livestreams to drive user-based recruitment, as well as gamified interfaces and fake identities.

Anti-Scam Initiative

Bitget, SlowMist, and Elliptic have also announced the launch of an Anti-Scam Hub to respond to the growing threat posed to crypto by fraudsters. The initiative will be used to trace illicit funds, disrupt phishing networks, and identify deceptive behavior across blockchains.

“Criminals are constantly evolving their methods of attack, using AI and finding new ways to scale their activities,” Arda Akartuna, Lead Crypto Threat Researcher at Elliptic. “This means that reciprocally, we are also working to scale our technology and blockchain capabilities to track and identify the new methods criminals are using.”

A protection fund worth more than $300 million is also being deployed to mitigate user risks.

Centralized Bitcoin treasuries now hold 30.9% of the total circulating supply, according to a new report by Gemini. This concentration, which spans across 216 entities that include governments, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), public and private companies, centralized exchanges, and DeFi contracts, ultimately indicates growing institutional maturity and adoption.

The total amount of BTC held by major institutional and custodial entities has skyrocketed to 6,145,207 BTC today, which represents a whopping 924% increase over the past decade. This rapid growth demonstrates how centralized players have steadily accumulated a larger share of the network’s supply, reshaping Bitcoin’s ownership structure in favor of institutional dominance.

Market Maturation

According to a joint report by Gemini and Glassnode, just three entities dominate Bitcoin adoption across most institutional categories, holding between 65% and 90% of total BTC holdings. This concentration reflected how early entrants shaped the strategic direction and legitimacy of Bitcoin within institutional finance.

On the other hand, private company holdings are more evenly distributed, which indicates a broader base of adoption at that level. While such dominance may decrease as institutional participation expands, the early leaders continue to play a central role in driving capital inflows and positioning Bitcoin as a credible macro asset in traditional finance.

Custody has slowly shifted away from centralized exchanges toward ETFs, funds, and DeFi protocols, which now serve as primary gateways for spot market access. While balances on centralized exchanges have declined over the past two years, this does not signal a tightening supply.

Instead, most of that Bitcoin has moved into custodial vehicles like US spot ETFs. The combined holdings of these spot custodians have remained relatively stable and range between 3.9 million and 4.2 million BTC since June 2021. This is indicative of a reallocation rather than a reduction in circulating supply.

Despite the stability in total holdings, these custodians exert significant influence on price action, driven by their sensitivity to market shifts. Monthly inflows and outflows can swing dramatically, by as much as $10 billion, which makes these entities key players in BTC’s short-term trajectory, even as the overall structure of the spot market becomes more institutionalized and regulated.

Sovereign BTC Treasuries

Government-held Bitcoin reserves have grown significantly, particularly in the US, China, the U.K., and Germany, where most acquisitions come through legal enforcement rather than market purchases.

The US stands out with more than 200,000 BTC, largely sourced from major law enforcement seizures. These include 69,369 BTC taken from the Silk Road case in November 2027 and 94,643 BTC recovered from the Bitfinex hack in February 2022.

After a brief decline, a portion of the US government’s remaining balance was formally converted into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) following an executive order by President Donald Trump on March 6th.

In the UK, Bitcoin has been seized by the National Crime Agency through operations targeting cybercriminals. China, after banning crypto activities, confiscated over 194,000 BTC in November 2020 in its crackdown on the PlusToken Ponzi scheme.

Germany also accumulated Bitcoin through criminal investigations, but officially liquidated all its holdings by April 29th. These sovereign holdings form a unique category in the crypto ecosystem: largely dormant, yet capable of influencing markets if moved.