The post Brad Garlinghouse Reveals What Happens to Ripple and XRP When Clarity Act Passes appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has given one of his clearest explanations yet of what the CLARITY Act would actually mean for Ripple, XRP and the broader financial system, and his answer is more significant than most people realise.

It Is Not About Ripple. It Is About the Banks.

Speaking on Fox Business, Garlinghouse said the CLARITY Act would not fundamentally change Ripple’s existing business. The company has already won its lawsuit against the SEC, with courts confirming that XRP is not a security. That battle is largely over.

What the CLARITY Act does instead is unlock something far bigger. It opens the door for banks in the United States and around the world to fully participate in the crypto industry without fear of legal consequences. And that, Garlinghouse says, changes everything.

“It unlocks banks in the United States and around the world to lean into this industry,” he said. “If we get it codified into law, more financial institutions in the United States and globally will be leaning in.”

Right now, many major financial institutions are interested in digital assets but held back by legal uncertainty. The CLARITY Act removes that uncertainty and gives them the green light to engage at scale.

What XRP Actually Does

Garlinghouse took a moment to explain XRP’s real-world role for viewers unfamiliar with the technology. XRP is an open-source digital asset that runs on the XRP Ledger, a blockchain designed specifically for payments and settlement. It is fast, cheap and energy efficient, making it well suited for moving large amounts of money across borders quickly.

The use cases are already real. Guggenheim and money market organisations are exploring the technology. The Land Authority of Dubai is using the XRP Ledger for land registry. Developers and entrepreneurs are building on the ledger at an accelerating pace, and real-world asset tokenisation is becoming one of its most significant growth areas.

Prime Brokerage Revenue Has Already Tripled

Garlinghouse also shared a business update. Ripple Prime, the company’s prime brokerage business, has already tripled its revenue run rate. He attributed this to Ripple’s strong balance sheet and its growing credibility with the world’s largest financial institutions, many of which previously refused to work with smaller crypto players but are now comfortable with Ripple as a counterparty.

He described 2026 as a record year for corporate demand, with CEOs and boards of directors across the United States actively asking their finance teams whether they should be using stablecoins and how they could be doing so more efficiently.

The post Top Nine Catalysts That Could Push Bitcoin Price Above $100000 appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Bitcoin is sitting below $70,000. But one analyst says that the next major money printing event is not a matter of if but when, and when it arrives, Bitcoin’s price could blow.

Analyst John laid out nine specific scenarios that could trigger the next big government spending wave, and every single one of them historically ends the same way: with more money printed, more dollars created, and hard assets like Bitcoin repriced significantly higher.

Why Another Big Print Is Coming

The argument starts with a simple observation. The COVID pandemic showed the world that governments will print trillions of dollars when they feel they have no choice. Most people have already half-forgotten how extraordinary that response was, slipping back into what John calls the frog in boiling water mentality. But the underlying conditions that make another print inevitable have not changed.

The Nine Catalysts to Watch

First, a large-scale geopolitical war or military escalation. Current conflicts could intensify and force emergency government spending at a scale that dwarfs anything seen in peacetime.

Second, AI-driven job displacement. If artificial intelligence eliminates enough jobs fast enough, governments will face enormous pressure to introduce universal basic income or massive public works programmes. That spending has to come from somewhere.

Third, the state budget collapses. California is already spending far beyond its means while losing its wealthiest residents. States cannot print money the way the federal government can, meaning a federal bailout becomes the only option when things get bad enough.

Fourth, pension system insolvency. Millions of Americans are depending on pension funds that have made promises they may not be able to keep.

Fifth, a regional banking crisis similar to what happened with Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, but potentially larger and more contagious.

Sixth, a collapse in private credit markets, which have grown enormously and remain largely unregulated.

Seventh, structural entitlement expansion including social security increases, Medicare expansion or student loan forgiveness programmes.

Eighth, a major natural disaster requiring emergency federal spending on a large scale.

Ninth, an AI public works programme, which John considers among the most likely near-term triggers as governments scramble to be seen doing something about technological unemployment.

What This Means for Bitcoin

John’s timeline for at least one of these catalysts materialising is somewhere between three and twenty-four months. When it happens, the money printing that follows would dwarf even COVID-era stimulus, and Bitcoin, with its fixed supply of 21 million coins, would be one of the few assets positioned to absorb that wave of new money.

The post ‘There Will Be No Backing’: Top Economist Shuts Down XRP Reserve Theory appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The idea has been building quietly inside the XRP community for years. Ripple and its native digital asset XRP, the argument goes, are not just another crypto project. They are positioning to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency settlement mechanism, allowing governments and financial institutions to settle transactions with full sovereignty while still coexisting with the dollar in other countries.

It is a big claim. So an expert put it directly to Martin Armstrong, an economic forecaster, and asked him what he thought.

His answer was not what XRP supporters were hoping for.

“There Will Be No Backing”

Armstrong’s first and most fundamental point was simple. Any asset that tries to replace or rival the dollar as a global reserve currency would need to be backed by something. And the moment you back something, you limit the ability to create more of it. That limitation, he argued, is precisely what destroyed Bretton Woods.

“You fixed gold to $35 but you did not limit the amount of dollars you were printing,” he said. “A three-year-old with a pocket calculator could figure out sooner or later it was going to go bust.”

His view is that no government on earth will voluntarily surrender its ability to create money, because that ability is the foundation of political power. Governments do not give that up for a private digital asset, no matter how well-designed.

The Real Problem Is Political, Not Technical

Armstrong’s deeper argument is that the global debt crisis everyone is worried about is not primarily a mathematical problem. It is a political one. Debt can keep rolling forward indefinitely as long as there are enough buyers willing to purchase new debt to pay off the old. It is, in his words, a Ponzi scheme that works perfectly fine until confidence disappears.

What is accelerating that loss of confidence right now, according to Armstrong, is geopolitics. China dumped $53 billion in US treasuries in the first quarter alone. The more the US government threatens and alienates foreign nations, the smaller the pool of willing buyers for American debt becomes. And when there are no buyers left for new debt, the default arrives.

“You have divided the world economy,” he said. “You have BRICS versus the SWIFT system. And these people are not willing to surrender their sovereignty and their power.”

What This Means for XRP

Armstrong did not attack XRP or Ripple directly. His skepticism is not about technology. It is about human nature and the history of power. Governments across centuries, from ancient Greek city states borrowing from the Temple of Apollo in the 4th century BC to modern sovereign nations, have consistently chosen to protect their ability to control money above almost everything else.

Whether Armstrong is right or whether the XRP community’s vision ultimately prevails may depend less on technology and more on how willing the world’s governments are to reimagine what money and sovereignty actually mean in a digital age.

The post Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Accuses Ripple of Using the CLARITY Act to Crush Competition appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

One of crypto’s most outspoken founders has launched an attack on Ripple and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, accusing the company of shaping the CLARITY Act in ways that benefit Ripple while placing devastating burdens on every other blockchain project in the industry.

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, did not hold back.

The Core Accusation

Hoskinson’s central argument is that the current version of the CLARITY Act, as shaped by Ripple’s influence, would make every new blockchain project a security by default while carving out a significant exemption for Ripple and XRP. In his view, this is not a coincidence. It is a calculated move by a well-funded company to lock in its own position while pulling up the ladder behind it.

“They’re trying to pass a bill that hurts the entire ecosystem while they get protected,” he said.

He also raised serious concerns about liability for open-source developers, arguing that the current language in the bill could expose independent developers to unlimited legal liability simply for building on a blockchain. For a space that runs largely on open-source code, that would be a potentially industry-ending provision.

The Premine Argument

Hoskinson went further, pointing to Ripple’s token distribution as evidence that the company has never needed the industry’s help or solidarity. He noted that Ripple gave itself what he described as a massive premine worth tens of billions of dollars at current valuations, and therefore had more than enough resources to fight the SEC on its own without asking for community support.

“I didn’t give myself 70% of the ADA supply,” he said pointedly, drawing a direct contrast with his own approach to Cardano’s token distribution.

His argument was that Ripple fought the SEC for its own commercial interests, not for the broader good of the crypto industry, and that the XRP community’s belief that Hoskinson should have supported them financially misunderstands both the situation and who actually needed help.

The CLARITY Act and What Is at Stake

Hoskinson’s frustration with the CLARITY Act goes beyond Ripple specifically. He argued that once legislation like this gets enshrined into law it becomes nearly impossible to change, pointing to the Securities Exchange Act of 1933 as a 93-year-old example of how financial regulation tends to calcify.

He said he had proposed a solution: creating a new definition of a digital security that would include blockchain-based disclosure, 24/7 liquidity and the ability to trade on exchanges, which would have addressed the stablecoin yield debate and brought all sides including banks to the table. That proposal, he says, was ignored.

His warning is stark. Pass a flawed bill now and it will be weaponised within two or three years by whoever holds political power at that point.

The Community Reaction

Predictably, the XRP community pushed back hard. Supporters accused Hoskinson of attacking Ripple out of competitive jealousy, arguing that he only raises these concerns because Cardano stands to lose ground if XRP and Ripple gain further regulatory legitimacy.

Hoskinson addressed this directly, saying the inability to separate the argument from the person making it is itself part of the problem. He pointed to years of social media consumption and what he called poor epistemic hygiene as reasons why nuanced conversations about policy have become almost impossible in the crypto space.

The question the industry now has to answer before May is simple: who exactly is the CLARITY Act being written for?

The post Crypto Markets Face $100 Million Supply Shock This Week appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The final days of March and the first week of April are shaping up to be important for crypto markets. More than $100 million worth of tokens are set to unlock between March 30 and April 5, 2026, spanning ten different projects and hitting the market across just six days.

Token unlocks matter because they release previously locked supply into circulation, which can create selling pressure if early investors, team members, or protocol treasuries decide to offload their holdings. Here is a breakdown of what is coming and when:

The Big One: Sui Leads the Week

The largest single unlock belongs to Sui, with $47.5 million worth of SUI tokens set to release on April 1. That represents 53.4 million tokens, equal to 0.53% of total supply. As the dominant unlock of the week by a wide margin, SUI traders will want to watch price action closely heading into Tuesday.

Definitive Brings the Second Largest

Definitive’s EDGE token comes in second with $16.6 million unlocking on April 2. 138.3 million EDGE tokens will be released, representing a substantial 13.8% of total supply. That is by far the highest percentage unlock of the week and could have an outsized impact on price if a significant portion enters the open market.

Mid-Tier Unlocks Worth Watching

Ethena’s ENA token sees $8.81 million unlock on April 2, releasing 94.1 million tokens representing 0.63% of supply. GUNZ follows with $7.03 million unlocking on March 31, representing 4.1% of its total supply across 410.3 million GUN tokens. EigenCloud rounds out the top five with $6.5 million in EIGEN tokens unlocking on April 1, equal to 2.04% of supply.

Smaller Unlocks

The remaining five unlocks are smaller in dollar terms but still relevant for holders of those specific assets. Optimism releases $3.39 million in OP on March 31, while Bitway unlocks $2.91 million in BTW on April 2. Zama, Zora and Keeta each unlock between $2.47 million and $2.7 million, with Keeta’s KTA unlock landing slightly later on April 5.

What This Means for the Market

Collectively, these unlocks add new supply across multiple tokens in a compressed timeframe. The projects most likely to face selling pressure are those with the highest percentage unlocks relative to their circulating supply. By that measure, EDGE at 13.8%, GUN at 4.1% and EIGEN at 2.04% carry the most risk of short-term downward price movement if recipients choose to sell.

The post Pi Network News: New Upgrade Deadline Announced But Community Asks Why KYC Has Been Broken for 3 Years appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Pi Network has officially announced that its Mainnet is upgrading to Protocol 21, with a hard deadline of April 6 for all node operators to complete the update. Any node that fails to upgrade in time will be disconnected from the network.

The Pi Core Team posted the announcement on X, directing node operators to follow the steps outlined in the official upgrade guide. The message was clear: this is not optional, and missing the deadline means losing your connection to the Mainnet entirely.

What the Upgrade Means

Protocol 21 is part of Pi Network’s ongoing series of node upgrades leading toward the much-anticipated v23.0 release scheduled for May 18. The sequential upgrade process is designed to ensure stability across the network, with each version building on the last before a more significant update rolls out.

Node operators play a central role in the Pi ecosystem. They validate transactions, maintain consensus, and keep the network running reliably. Missing a mandatory upgrade is not a minor inconvenience. It means falling out of sync with the rest of the network entirely.

The Community Is Frustrated

While the technical announcement was straightforward, the community reaction underneath it told a different story. Hundreds of Pioneers took the opportunity to voice long-running frustrations, many of them centred on a single issue: KYC.

User Baqeer wrote simply: “Since the launch of Pi, I am mining. Up to now they did not give me a KYC slot.” His comment resonated widely, with many others sharing similar experiences of waiting years for verification that never arrived.

Another user named shared that his KYC had been stuck for three years despite completing every item on his Mainnet checklist except one step that he says is not within his control.

“PCT, please kindly attend to these issues for us,” he wrote.

A Bigger Concern

Beyond the KYC frustration, some users raised a more existential question about the network’s direction. One commenter warned that if node participation continues to decline, the network could eventually consolidate into a small number of nodes, undermining the decentralisation Pi Network was built to achieve.

Pi Network has not publicly responded to the KYC complaints in the replies to the Protocol 21 announcement. For now, node operators have until April 6 to upgrade, while millions of ordinary Pioneers continue waiting for the verification that would allow them to access what they have spent years mining.

The post XRP Price Prediction: Analyst Says XRP Must Hit $100 for Banks to Use It appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Everyone in crypto watches market cap. It is the number that appears on every chart, every app and every news headline. But according to financial analyst Jake Claver, market cap might actually be one of the worst ways to measure whether a digital asset is genuinely strong or just temporarily popular.

Claver has spent the last year developing what he calls the Liquidity Index, a six-part equation designed to measure the true utility and stability of a digital asset. And when you run XRP through it, the results are interesting.

Why Market Cap Tells You Almost Nothing

Market cap is simply price multiplied by supply. It tells you what the market thinks something is worth right now. It does not tell you whether that asset can actually handle the weight of global financial infrastructure. Claver’s Liquidity Index measures six things instead: market depth, liquidity continuity, slippage cost, available supply, settlement speed, and accessibility. Together, these paint a very different picture of which assets are built to last.

The Swimming Pool Analogy That Changes Everything

To explain market depth, Claver uses a brilliantly simple analogy. Imagine XRP’s market as a swimming pool. The water is the money available to absorb large trades. If JP Morgan wants to move $100 million using XRP and the pool is shallow, that trade is like a 200-pound adult cannonballing into a kiddie pool. Water goes everywhere. Price crashes. The trade becomes expensive and unpredictable.

But if the pool is the size of a lake, the same cannonball barely makes a ripple. The trade goes through cleanly and price stays stable. The question then becomes: how do you make the pool deeper?

Here is where it gets interesting. XRP has a fixed supply. You cannot print more tokens the way the Federal Reserve prints dollars. So the only way to deepen the liquidity pool is to make each individual token worth more.

“If XRP is worth $1 each and you need to move $100 million, you need 100 million tokens sitting ready to absorb that trade,” Claver explained. “But if XRP is worth $100 each, you only need a million tokens to absorb the same trade. Same dollars moving, way less stress on the pool. That is not speculation. That is arithmetic.”

The Slippage Problem Banks Cannot Ignore

Right now, if a major bank tried to push $100 million through XRP, they would lose around 10% to slippage alone. That is $10 million simply evaporating in the process of executing a trade. In traditional stock markets, moving the same $100 million costs less than half of 1%. Crypto currently loses that comparison by a wide margin.

To close that gap, Claver says the value sitting on XRP’s order books needs to grow by somewhere between 20 and 100 times its current level. Since the token supply cannot grow, the price has to do all of that work.

Supply Is Shrinking While Demand Grows

At the same time that institutional demand is rising, the available supply of XRP is quietly shrinking. ETFs from firms like Grayscale and Franklin Templeton lock tokens in cold storage, removing them from circulation entirely. Banks holding XRP as operational inventory are not leaving those tokens on exchanges. DeFi protocols and lending pools are absorbing more supply every month.

The result is a classic supply and demand squeeze. When demand rises and supply falls simultaneously, prices do not drift upward gradually. They gap up sharply, because at some point there simply are not enough sellers and buyers have to pay whatever the next willing seller will accept.

Speed and Access: The Final Two Pieces

XRP settles transactions in 3 to 5 seconds. Bitcoin takes up to an hour. Ethereum takes between 5 and 15 minutes. Claver compares it to a bank teller who can serve one customer every 30 minutes versus one who serves a customer every 5 seconds. The fast teller with the same amount of money can serve exponentially more customers. A market maker with $10 million working on XRP could theoretically support billions in daily volume. The same market maker on Bitcoin might support a few hundred million.

The final piece is regulatory access. Until the GENIUS Act passed in July 2025, US banks were legally unable to touch crypto at scale. That door is now open for stablecoins. If the CLARITY Act passes, US banks could hold XRP directly on their balance sheets as a recognised asset. When that happens, Claver says the pool gets significantly deeper very quickly.

The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Lawrence Lepard Sets $200,000 Target as Fed Returns to Money Printing in 2026 appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

While Bitcoin sits near $70,000 and many investors are questioning whether they missed the rally, macro investor Lawrence Lepard is making a bullish case: the biggest move is still ahead, and the window to buy cheap is closing fast.

Buy the Dip or Regret It

Lepard’s message to anyone sitting on the sidelines is clear. “Think of it the way you think of food. Filet mignon is on sale, you go buy it,” he said. “If you can buy Bitcoin at $70,000, that is great.” For long-term investors, the current price is not a warning sign. It is an opportunity.

He manages money on a multi-year timeframe and says he has high confidence that Bitcoin reaches $200,000, driven not by speculation but by the structural collapse of the dollar’s purchasing power.

The Fed Is Printing Again

The trigger for Lepard’s thesis is already in motion. The Federal Reserve has quietly returned to money printing, currently running at $40 billion per month, what analyst Lyn Alden has called the “gradual print.” While it is not the trillions printed during COVID, Lepard believes it is the beginning of a much larger wave.

“The next print will be bigger than the last one,” he warned. With the US deficit running at over $2 trillion annually and a war adding hundreds of billions more, he sees no path forward that does not involve significantly more money creation.

Dollar Losing Reserve Status

Lepard draws a direct parallel to Britain’s Suez moment, the point at which the pound lost its global dominance. He believes the US dollar is experiencing the same slow-motion collapse, accelerated by geopolitical conflict and fiscal irresponsibility.

“If you are saving money, you have to save in things the government cannot print,” he said plainly.

Bitcoin Over Gold

While Lepard is bullish on both Bitcoin and gold, he sees Bitcoin as the better buy at current levels, with greater upside potential as institutional adoption accelerates and available supply continues to shrink through ETF lockups and long-term holding.

His timeline for the broader system to face a breaking point: somewhere in the next 12 to 18 months. The avalanche, he says, is already built. Nobody knows which snowflake triggers it.

The post Ripple CEO Was in Washington Two Days Ago and Came Back Saying the CLARITY Act Passes by End of May appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has made one of his boldest public predictions yet, telling an audience at FII Priority that the CLARITY Act will pass by the end of May 2026, and that the stablecoin payment revolution is no longer a question of if but when.

“People Are Exhausted. That Is When They Finally Compromise”

Garlinghouse was candid about the state of crypto legislation in Washington. Speaking about the CLARITY Act, which is designed to define what counts as a security and what counts as a commodity in the digital asset world, he acknowledged the bill has moved slower than expected, largely because banks have reopened debates around how stablecoin yields and rewards should work.

But he is not pessimistic. Two days before the interview, he was in Washington meeting with key figures involved in the legislative process, and what he heard gave him confidence.

“The person I trust on how the sausage is made said when people are their most exhausted and most annoyed, that is when they finally compromise,” Garlinghouse said with a laugh. “I think we are there. I will predict by the end of May we will get something across.”

A Night and Day Difference From the Biden Era

Garlinghouse pointed to a landmark moment that has already changed the landscape dramatically. Nine days before the interview, the SEC and CFTC jointly confirmed that 16 digital assets are commodities, a move that would have been unthinkable under the previous administration.

“Think about the contrast between that and the Biden war on crypto that drove it offshore in the United States,” he said. “We have already made huge progress in this administration to provide structure and clarity.”

He also credited the GENIUS Act, passed last summer, as a major turning point that unlocked real corporate interest in stablecoins. Fortune 2000 CEOs and CFOs are now actively asking whether their companies should be using stablecoins, a conversation that simply was not happening at scale before.

The Stablecoin Wave Is Coming and It Is Coming Fast

On the broader question of where crypto goes next, Garlinghouse was direct. He referenced predictions made by some of the biggest names in traditional finance, including Stanley Druckenmiller, who said all payments will be done through stablecoins by 2030, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has predicted all assets will eventually be tokenised.

“I do not think they are too far off,” said fellow panelist Zach, who was seated alongside Garlinghouse. “This is just an improved system to what currently exists.”

Garlinghouse closed with a line that summed up his entire outlook in a single sentence, borrowing from a well-known framework: “People overestimate what happens in five years and underestimate what happens in 10 years.

What This Means for XRP and Ripple

For Ripple specifically, Garlinghouse said that the company does not have a strong vested interest in the stablecoin yield debate that has slowed the CLARITY Act down. Ripple launched its own stablecoin RLUSD and has positioned itself as payments infrastructure rather than a yield product. That gives Ripple a relatively neutral seat at the table while the banks and crypto platforms fight over the rewards question.

With the CLARITY Act potentially weeks away from a Senate vote, and Garlinghouse putting his personal credibility behind an end of May timeline, the next few weeks could define the regulatory future of the entire US crypto industry.

The post Zcash Price Could Reach $4,000 If It Captures Just 2% of Bitcoin and Gold Markets, Says CIO appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

While most of the crypto world is focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum, one investor is making the case that Zcash could be one of the most undervalued assets in the entire market. Will McEvoy, Chief Investment Officer at Cypherpunk Holdings, sat down with CoinDesk to lay out exactly why he believes ZEC could reach $4,000, and the logic behind that target is more grounded than it might first appear.

The Math Behind $4,000

McEvoy’s price thesis is built on a simple comparison. If Zcash could capture just 2% of Bitcoin’s total value, by convincing a small slice of Bitcoin holders that a truly private version of the asset is worth owning, ZEC would be trading close to $2,000. Push that further, he argues, and the number climbs fast.

“If you expand that and get to convince some gold owners and offshore wealth holders, whether people holding money in offshore bank accounts or value in art, you can get to $3,000 or $4,000,” McEvoy said. “And in the long run there’s quite a good setup for much higher.”

The target audience here is not retail crypto traders. It is the global pool of capital that already operates outside traditional financial systems and is looking for a digital home.

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Why Bitcoin Cannot Do What Zcash Does

A common pushback on privacy coins is that Bitcoin already offers some degree of anonymity. McEvoy mostly disagreed on that idea. Bitcoin, he explained, is pseudonymous at best, and in a world increasingly powered by AI, that distinction matters enormously.

“AI is already very good at stitching together disparate data sources,” he said. “If there is a data leak about you, or public information on your social media, any information about you will be used to deanonymise the Bitcoin blockchain.”

Gold Has the Same Problem

McEvoy also addressed the idea that gold provides meaningful privacy. He said that Gold is private in a limited sense, but it cannot be moved quietly. When a central bank ships tonnes of gold across the world, it loads pallets onto aircraft. That is not private. Zcash moves value across borders without leaving a public trail.

The Regulatory Question

The SEC ended its investigation into Zcash earlier this year, which removed one major cloud hanging over the project. But McEvoy acknowledged that regulatory risk has not disappeared entirely. A future SEC chair could take a different view on privacy coins, and clear legislation in the U.S. has not yet arrived.

FAQs

The post Ripple’s AI Finds 10 Bugs in the XRP Ledger; But The Community Shouldn’t Panic appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The XRP Ledger has been running without interruption since 2012. It has processed over 100 million ledgers, completed more than 3 billion transactions, and secured billions of dollars in value. By any measure, that is an impressive track record.

But Ripple is not resting on it.

In a detailed post published on March 26, Ripple engineer Ayo Akinyele revealed that the team has overhauled its entire security approach, deploying artificial intelligence to hunt for vulnerabilities deep inside the XRPL codebase. And the AI has already found things humans missed.

The AI Red Team Is Already Working

Ripple has established a dedicated AI-assisted red team whose sole job is to stress-test the XRP Ledger the way an attacker would. The results have been striking. The team has already uncovered more than 10 bugs, with only low-severity issues disclosed publicly so far. All are being actively fixed.

To be clear, none of these were catastrophic. But the fact that a decade-old system is still yielding new vulnerabilities under AI scrutiny tells you something important: the old way of testing was not thorough enough, and Ripple knows it.

“AI allows us to shift from reactive debugging to proactive, systematic discovery of vulnerabilities,” Akinyele wrote, “strengthening the ledger faster and with greater confidence than ever before.”

Why Now?

The timing is not accidental. The XRP Ledger is no longer just a payments rail. It is being positioned as infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, institutional DeFi, and global financial settlement. The stakes are higher than they have ever been, and Ripple is adjusting its security posture accordingly.

The next XRPL software release will be dedicated entirely to bug fixes and improvements, with zero new features. That is a significant signal. In an industry obsessed with shipping new things, choosing to stop and fix what exists is a mature and frankly reassuring decision.

What Is Changing

Beyond the AI red team, Ripple is also requiring multiple independent security audits before any major network change goes live, expanding its bug bounty programme to bring in outside researchers, and running “attackathons” where new features are deliberately tested in hostile environments before they touch the main network.

The codebase itself is also being modernised, addressing structural issues like inconsistent feature interactions and undocumented assumptions that have quietly built up over more than a decade of development.

The post Why is Crypto Crashing Today: $16.4 Billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum Options Expire Friday appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

One of the largest single-day options expiries of the year is hitting markets on Friday, and the clock is already ticking. A combined $16.4 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum options contracts are set to expire at 8am UTC.

What Is Actually Happening

When options expire at this scale, markets experience what traders call “max pain,” the price level where the maximum number of contracts expire worthless and market makers take the least damage. For Ethereum, that level sits at $2,300, notably above where ETH is currently trading at around $2,067.

The bigger the expiry, the stronger the force dragging prices toward that level in the final hours. At $16.4 billion, there is a lot of gravity in play right now.

Bitcoin Is Carrying the Bulk

Bitcoin holds the majority of the $16.4 billion in notional exposure. With BTC currently trading around $68,969, the tug-of-war between options holders and spot traders is already underway. Both sides are jockeying for position before Friday’s cutoff, and sharp moves in either direction before 8am UTC are firmly on the table.

Ethereum, trading at $2,067 at the time of writing, is sitting well below its max pain level of $2,300. That gap is significant. It means ETH options sellers have a strong incentive to see the price drift higher before expiry, while put holders want it to stay exactly where it is.

The Broader Market Picture

The backdrop is not helping sentiment. The Fear and Greed Index is sitting at 29, firmly in fear territory. The broader crypto market cap stands at $2.37 trillion, down 2.67% on the day, but average RSI across crypto assets is at 40.99, hovering near oversold levels. 

Among the majors, Solana is down 4.62% on the day to $87.52, Dogecoin is leading with a 5.18% decline, and XRP is down 3.06% to $1.36. 

What Happens After the Bell

Once those options expire, $16.4 billion in open interest disappears from the board. The max pain gravity vanishes with it, and that is typically when markets find their real direction.

If Bitcoin and Ethereum have been suppressed into the expiry, the release of that pressure could send prices sharply higher. If they have been running hot into Friday, the unwind could cut the other way. Either scenario is possible.

The post Senator Tim Scott Just Gave the Clearest Update Yet on America’s Crypto Law: Here’s What He Said appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The CLARITY Act, America’s biggest attempt at crypto regulation, is inching toward the finish line. But as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, there is still one critical piece missing: full industry buy-in.

Republicans and Democrats Are Actually Agreeing

In a rare show of bipartisan unity, Scott confirmed that both Republicans and Democrats are now aligned on the CLARITY Act, with the White House also on board. For a bill this complex and this consequential, that is no small thing.

“We now have Republicans and Democrats working together. The White House agrees as well,” Scott said. “I am very optimistic about where we are.”

The bill, which could come out as early as Easter, is designed to give crypto a proper legal home in the United States, separating digital commodities from securities and handing the CFTC clear authority over assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Stablecoin Yield Fight

The thorniest issue holding things up is stablecoin yields. The latest version of the bill bans passive yield on stablecoins but allows activity-based rewards, a compromise that has not gone down smoothly with everyone at the table.

Coinbase, one of the most powerful names in crypto, has pushed back on the language. Circle, the issuer of USDC, saw its stock drop 20% following reports of the compromise. Scott acknowledged the tension but insisted all players are still engaged.

“I spoke with Coinbase. Everyone is still at the table,” he said. “Work to be done.”

He was also careful to push back on the idea that banks are winning the argument over crypto platforms on the rewards question. “We are talking about an apple and an orange, not an apple versus an apple,” Scott said, stressing that stablecoin accounts and FDIC-insured bank accounts are fundamentally different products and should not be regulated identically.

Why This Matters Beyond Crypto

Scott framed the CLARITY Act as something far bigger than a crypto bill. In his view, getting this legislation right is about keeping America economically dominant on the world stage. “This is the first time ever we have tried to deal with such a historic piece of legislation,” he said. “It will keep America as the most dominant player in the world economically.”

The Clock Is Ticking

With a potential Senate Banking Committee markup pencilled in between April 13 and 20, the window for passing the CLARITY Act this year is narrow. Miss the May deadline for floor votes and the bill likely gets pushed to 2027.

Scott sounded confident but realistic. “This is hard. Threading the needle is always difficult the first time. It gets better and better.”

The post How Much XRP Do You Actually Need to Beat 90% of All Holders Right Now? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Six months ago, getting into the top 10% of XRP holders would have cost you around $6,000. Today, that same spot costs closer to $3,000. The entry price has been cut in half, and the reason is not good news for existing holders.

A Market in Freefall

XRP has fallen roughly 50% since the final quarter of 2025, caught up in a broader crypto market selloff that has wiped out $1.45 trillion in total market value. For investors who bought near the peak, it has been a painful ride. But for those sitting on the sidelines with cash, the same downturn has opened a much cheaper door into the asset.

What the Numbers Say

According to the latest percentile distribution data, holding at least 2,208 XRP is now enough to place you in the top 10% of all XRP wallets. That translates to roughly $3,000 at current prices, down from approximately $6,000 when XRP was trading at its Q4 2025 highs.

The data also shows just how concentrated wealth remains at the top. The top 1% of holders each hold at least 45,846 XRP, while the top 0.01%, just 774 wallets, each hold more than 3.8 million XRP. In other words, a tiny group of wallets controls an enormous share of the total supply.

More Wallets, More Holders

Despite the price drop, total XRP wallet numbers have continued to grow. The number of addresses qualifying for the top 10% bracket has risen to 773,594, suggesting that new investors are entering the market and accumulating even as prices fall. It is a pattern often seen during bear markets, where retail buyers step in while larger players remain cautious.

The Bigger Picture

The drop in entry price is a double-edged story. On one hand, it shows genuine pain for long-term holders who watched their portfolios shrink significantly over six months. On the other hand, it marks one of the more accessible entry points for XRP in recent memory.

Whether this accumulation phase eventually leads to a recovery, or whether further downside lies ahead, remains the key question for the XRP community heading into the second half of 2026.

The post Bitcoin Price Prediction: Can BTC Break $73K or Drop Again? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Bitcoin is showing signs of a short-term recovery, with price action attempting to push higher toward the $73,500 level. However, analysts warn that the current move may not mean a full bullish reversal, but rather a temporary rebound within a broader corrective structure.

Recent market activity shows that Bitcoin climbed steadily before encountering resistance near the $71,550 zone. This level has been a critical barrier, having acted as a rejection point multiple times in recent sessions.

Despite the upward momentum, the move is being viewed as a counter-trend rally, meaning it could face renewed selling pressure. While the price action remains constructive in the very short term, the broader structure still lacks clarity.

For bullish momentum to continue, Bitcoin must break decisively above the $71,550 resistance. A successful breakout could open the door for a move toward the $73,500 range, which is currently seen as a near-term target based on technical projections.

On the downside, support is forming around $70,400. Holding this level is crucial for maintaining upward momentum. A break below it would not necessarily trigger a sharp decline, but it could signal a shift in structure and increase the likelihood of further consolidation or downside movement.

Bigger Picture Remains Uncertain

Zooming out, the broader trend shows Bitcoin may still be navigating a corrective phase following a previous decline. Analysts point to the possibility that the current upward move is part of a larger wave structure, rather than the beginning of a sustained rally.

The resistance range between $73,500 and $74,800 is being closely monitored. This zone could act as a strong ceiling, where sellers may re-enter the market and trigger another downward leg.

The post Midnight Deal With Monument Could Drive Massive TVL Growth, Says Hoskinson appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

In a move that shows the growing convergence between traditional banking and blockchain technology, Monument Bank has announced plans to introduce tokenised retail deposits using blockchain infrastructure.

The initiative, developed in collaboration with the Midnight Foundation, aims to allow customers to hold digital versions of their bank deposits while maintaining the same protections and benefits as conventional savings accounts.

Unlike cryptocurrencies, these tokenised deposits are not separate assets. Instead, they act as digital representations of funds already held within the bank. Each token is backed one-to-one by traditional deposits, meaning customers can still redeem their holdings in pounds sterling while earning interest as usual.

This is one of the largest deals we've ever done and could bring hundreds of millions to billions of TVL to the Midnight ecosystem. I'm extremely proud of @F_ZK_Now and his team at the @midnightfdn for the hard work they put into the negotiations with Monument.

Midnight is the… https://t.co/T98Z1jVEQR

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 25, 2026

The project is expected to begin with a rollout of up to £250 million in deposits. This marks an early step in what could become a broader transformation in how banks manage and deliver financial products using blockchain systems.

Beyond simple tokenisation, the bank is planning a phased expansion of services. Future stages may introduce access to tokenised investment products, including asset classes such as private equity and commodities. Traditionally, these opportunities have been limited to institutional investors or high-net-worth individuals, but tokenisation could make them more widely accessible.

Another planned feature includes the ability for customers to borrow against their tokenised assets. This approach would allow users to unlock liquidity without needing to sell their investments, reflecting services typically associated with private banking.

An important component of the initiative is the use of privacy-focused blockchain technology. The infrastructure is designed to ensure that sensitive financial data remains accessible only to authorised parties, addressing regulatory concerns around transparency and data protection in decentralised systems.

The development comes as financial institutions worldwide continue to explore tokenisation as a way to improve efficiency and expand access to financial markets. While many projects have focused on institutional use, this approach places retail customers at the centre, potentially marking a shift toward more mainstream adoption of blockchain-powered banking solutions.

The post Was the XRP Lawsuit Meant to Shake Out Retail Investors? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

The long-standing legal saga surrounding XRP is once again under scrutiny after analyst Jesse from Apex Crypto Insights shared views hinting the case may not have been what it seemed.

In a recent discussion, Jesse described the lawsuit involving Ripple Labs as potentially strategic rather than purely legal, stating that his initial belief was that the entire episode might have been orchestrated.

“To me, I’ve always said I think this was a coordinated plan… maybe to scare retailers out and justify a low price for a while,” Jesse said.

A Theory of Market Pressure

According to Jesse, one possible explanation behind the lawsuit was to temporarily suppress XRP’s price. This, he suggested, could have allowed time for institutional partnerships and ecosystem development without excessive retail speculation.

He described the situation as a “teeter,” implying a controlled balancing act rather than a full-scale attack.

“I always thought it was just all teeter… to justify a low price so they have time to incentivize partners,” he added.

Doubt Creeps In After New Revelations

However, Jesse acknowledged that his perspective shifted after reviewing what he referred to as newly surfaced documents, which hinted at the possibility of a more deliberate attempt to target XRP.

“When the files came out… showing they were trying to attack XRP, I started to think maybe it wasn’t just a teeter,” he said.

Despite this, he remains uncertain, estimating only a “20% chance” that the lawsuit represented a fully genuine regulatory action rather than a coordinated move.

Market Impact and Ongoing Debate

The XRP lawsuit has had a profound impact on the cryptocurrency’s price, adoption, and regulatory perception since it began. While parts of the case have moved toward resolution, discussions like Jesse’s show that questions around intent, fairness, and broader implications remain far from settled.

Whether viewed as a calculated strategy or a legitimate enforcement action, the XRP case continues to shape how regulators and investors approach the wider crypto market.