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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
