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What SBI Really Owns in Ripple May Surprise XRP Investors

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XRP (XRP) Price Performance

SBI Holdings Chairman Yoshitaka Kitao has confirmed that the Japanese financial services giant holds an equity stake in Ripple Labs, clarifying speculation surrounding the company’s exposure to XRP.

The statement follows recent remarks from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. He suggested the firm has the “opportunity” to become a $1 trillion company. 

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SBI Holdings Chairman Dismisses XRP Rumors

Kitao addressed circulating claims that SBI directly holds $10 billion worth of XRP tokens. He rejected those assertions, clarifying that the firm’s exposure is not to XRP but to Ripple Labs. According to Kitao, SBI owns approximately a 9% stake in Ripple.

“Not $10 bil. in XRP but around 9% of  Ripple Lab. So our hidden asset could be much bigger,” he said. “When it comes to Ripple Lab’s total valuation, which obviously includes its ecosystem that Ripple has created, that would be enormous. SBI owns more than 9% of that much.”

SBI has been a long-standing strategic partner of Ripple and has supported the expansion of blockchain-based payment solutions across Asia through joint ventures and financial infrastructure initiatives.

​​In November 2025, Ripple’s valuation rose to $40 billion after a $500 million funding round led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group and affiliates of Citadel Securities.

Based on that valuation, a 9% stake in Ripple Labs would be worth approximately $3.6 billion on paper. However, if Ripple’s valuation were to increase significantly, particularly in line with Garlinghouse’s long-term $1 trillion ambition, SBI’s equity stake could rise proportionally in value.

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Ripple CEO Eyes Trillion-Dollar Milestone

During the XRP Community Day on X (formerly Twitter), Garlinghouse projected that a crypto firm will eventually surpass the $1 trillion mark. This could put it in the same league as major technology corporations such as Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft.

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“There will be a trillion-dollar crypto company. I don’t doubt that for a second. I think Ripple has the opportunity, if we do things well in partnership with the overall XRP ecosystem, to be that company, and maybe there’ll be more than one,” he said.

Garlinghouse emphasized that Ripple aims to be successful. However, its mission goes beyond corporate growth. 

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He stated that Ripple’s “reason for existence is driving success around XRP and the XRP ecosystem.” The executive described XRP as Ripple’s “north star.” 

“We will continue to build products and services that customers love and will pay for to make Ripple successful, but it’s in service of the overall XRP ecosystem,” he added.

These remarks come as XRP continues to face market challenges. BeInCrypto Markets data showed that the altcoin has dropped 7.8% over the past 24 hours. At the time of writing, it traded at $1.47.

XRP (XRP) Price Performance
XRP (XRP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets

Despite Ripple’s strategic focus on XRP, ongoing network developments, and ecosystem expansion, these advances have not yet resulted in a meaningful price breakout.

Over the longer horizon, continued ecosystem growth and deeper institutional integration may provide stronger support for price appreciation and broader adoption. Nonetheless, for now, XRP remains largely influenced by broader market conditions.

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Can Pi Network price reclaim $0.20 after breaking a key resistance trendline?

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Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart.

Pi Network’s price shot up more than 50% to $0.20 earlier last week before parting with some of its gains and settling lower. Can it reclaim the key psychological figure now that it has confirmed a breakout from a multi-month trendline resistance?

Summary

  • Pi Network price briefly rallied to a four-week high of $0.20 last week.
  • Pi price action has confirmed a breakout from a multi-week descending trendline support on the daily chart.

According to data from crypto.news, Pi Network (PI) price rose nearly 54% to a four-week high of $0.20 on February 15 before profit taking stirred it back to $0.17 at the time of writing, though it still retains 20% gains over a seven-day period.

The PI network rally came amid investor hype surrounding the project’s upcoming key upgrades for the following months, aimed at building the ecosystem towards a more decentralized network. Notably, the upgrades for its mainnet node operators are part of its transition from version 19 to 22 of the Stellar network to accelerate its vision of decentralization while seeking to optimize performance, better security, and scalability to support long-term network growth for the project.

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Another catalyst fueling this uptick is the hype surrounding the first anniversary of its mainnet launch on Feb. 20.  Investors often tend to celebrate such milestones by buying more tokens, which can often drive speculative rallies.

Against this backdrop, derivatives data show that the Pi Network token’s funding rate has shifted from negative to positive at press time. This reversal suggests that traders are rotating from bearish to bullish positioning, which typically tends to uplift market sentiment surrounding the associated token.

Additionally, there is a lot of community chatter that the token could be listed on crypto exchange Kraken later this year. Getting listed on a major exchange like Kraken, which has a customer base of millions, could provide a significant boost to its price and overall liquidity.

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On the daily chart, Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout of a descending trendline that had been acting as dynamic resistance since late November last year. Breaking above this long-standing pattern indicates that bulls are reclaiming market dominance and appear positioned to drive prices higher in the short term.

Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart.
Pi Network price has confirmed a breakout from a descending trendline support on the daily chart — Feb. 16 | Source: crypto.news

Evidence of a burgeoning uptrend is visible across several oscillators, with the MACD lines turning upward to indicate a positive crossover in momentum. This is typically interpreted as a sign that the period of distribution is ending and accumulation has begun. 

Validating this transition, the Aroon Up at 92.86% vastly outpaces the 28.5% Down reading, confirming that the bulls have successfully seized control of the price discovery process.

Hence, Pi Network is well-positioned to see a potential rebound to its Feb. 15 high of $0.20. If bullish momentum persists, the rally could extend to its Nov. 28 high of $0.28, which lies 64% above the current price level.

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Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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Willy Woo Flags Q Day Risk as Bitcoin’s Valuation Versus Gold Slips

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Willy Woo Flags Q Day Risk as Bitcoin’s Valuation Versus Gold Slips

Onchain analyst and early Bitcoin adopter Willy Woo is warning that growing attention to quantum computing risks is starting to weigh on Bitcoin’s long-term valuation case against gold.

Woo argued in a Monday X post that markets had begun to price in the risk of a future “Q‑Day” breakthrough — shorthand for the moment when a powerful enough quantum computer exists to break today’s public key cryptography.

Roughly 4 million “lost” Bitcoin (BTC) — coins whose private keys are presumed gone — could be dragged back into play, Woo argued, if a powerful quantum computer could derive private keys from exposed public keys, undermining part of Bitcoin’s core scarcity narratives.

He estimated only about a 25% chance that the network would agree to freeze those coins via a hard fork, one of the most contentious issues in Bitcoin governance today.

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Q‑day risk and “lost” coins

According to blockchain researchers, the 4 million exposed coins represent around 25%-30% of the Bitcoin supply and are held in addresses whose public keys are already visible onchain, making them among the first at risk in a quantum attack scenario.

Related: Institutions may get ‘fed up’ and fire Bitcoin devs over quantum: VC

Yet any move to freeze these coins would upend long‑standing norms around fungibility, immutability and property rights.

Freezing the coins could provoke deep splits between those prioritizing backward‑compatible fixes (upgrades that preserve existing rules and coins without invalidating past transactions or requiring a contentious hard fork), and those willing to rewrite rules to protect early balances.

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With a 75% likelihood of the coins remaining untouched, investors should assume, Woo said, a non‑trivial probability that an amount of BTC equivalent to roughly “8 years of enterprise accumulation” becomes spendable again.

It’s a prospect that is already being priced in as a structural discount on BTC’s valuation versus gold for the next five to 15 years, Woo argued, meaning that Bitcoin’s long‑term tendency to gain purchasing power when measured in ounces of gold is no longer in play.

BTC vs Gold Chart Price and Ratio. Source: Bitbo

Bitcoin’s post‑quantum migration path

Many core developers and cryptographers stress that Bitcoin does not face an imminent “doomsday” situation and has time to adapt.

The emerging roadmap for a post‑quantum migration is not a single emergency hard fork, they argue, but a phased process, eventually steering the network toward new address formats and key management practices over a multi‑year transition. 

Even if quantum did arrive sooner than expected and the coins were recirculated, other Bitcoiners, such as Human Rights Foundation chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein, argue that it is unlikely they would be dumped onto the market. 

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Gladstein sees a more likely scenario where the coins are accumulated by a nation-state rather than immediately sold.

Related: Why Luke Gromen is fading Bitcoin while staying bullish on debasement

Quantum risk goes mainstream in macro

Still, Woo’s warning lands in a market where Bitcoin is trading almost 50% off its all-time high, and quantum has already moved from a niche concern to a mainstream risk factor in institutional portfolios.

In January, Jefferies’ longtime “Greed & Fear” strategist Christopher Wood cut Bitcoin from his flagship model portfolio and rotated the position into gold, explicitly citing the possibility that “cryptographically relevant” quantum machines could weaken Bitcoin’s store of value case for pension‑style investors. 

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Magazine: Kevin O’Leary says quantum attacking Bitcoin would be a waste of time