Ripple’s $750 million share buyback values the company at $50 billion, making it the ninth most valuable private company in the world.

Despite Ripple’s achievements, the XRP price isn’t reacting and is down over 60% from its high.

Most banks on RippleNet use Ripple’s software without touching XRP, and the one product that creates token demand—On-Demand Liquidity—is mostly limited to remittance firms.

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Ripple is now worth $50 billion. The company just launched a $750 million share buyback that puts it among the ten most valuable private companies in the world, alongside SpaceX, OpenAI, and Stripe.

Ripple has also spent over $3 billion on acquisitions since 2023, partnered with Mastercard's crypto payments program, and landed Deutsche Bank as a client for cross-border settlement. Despite all of that, the XRP price has been sliding, and the token is down over 30% since the start of the year.

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XRP investors want to know if Ripple hitting $50 billion would actually help XRP, or if the achievement is just another milestone that doesn't move the token at all.

Ripple is offering to buy back up to $750 million in shares from early investors and employees at a price that values the company at $50 billion, and the offer runs through April. Ripple did something similar in January 2024, buying back $285 million worth of shares when the company was valued at $11.3 billion. It tried again in September 2025 at a $40 billion valuation, but that round barely got any takers because employees didn't want to sell, as they were betting the shares would keep climbing. Shares in the current offer are priced at roughly $143, up from around $125 before the deal was announced, and they've since moved past $151 on secondary markets.

The jump from $11.3 billion to $50 billion happened in just two years. In November 2025, Ripple raised $500 million from affiliates of Citadel Securities, Fortress Investment Group, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace at a $40 billion valuation. Four months later, the buyback puts Ripple at $50 billion. The 25% increase happened while Bitcoin fell 44% from its all-time high and XRP dropped over 60%.

Ripple had over $1 billion in cash and roughly $25 billion in crypto—mostly XRP—on its balance sheet as of January 2024. Since then, the company went on a $2.45 billion acquisition spree in 2025. It paid $1.25 billion for prime brokerage Hidden Road, which is now operating as Ripple Prime. It spent $1 billion on GTreasury, a treasury management platform used by Fortune 500 companies. It picked up stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million, and added custody firm Palisade for an undisclosed amount.

On top of the acquisitions, Ripple has processed over $100 billion in total payment volume through its network, and its stablecoin RLUSD has grown to a $1.56 billion market cap since launching in December 2024. The buyback is funded from cash reserves, not from selling XRP.

Ripple is now the ninth most valuable private company in the world, in the same tier as SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Shein. Monica Long, Ripple's president, has been clear that the company has no plans for an IPO. The buyback is how Ripple gives long-term shareholders a way to cash out without going public. XRP's total market cap currently sits around $84.7 billion, which means the company behind the token is valued at roughly 59% of the token's entire market cap.

Ripple's $50 billion valuation and XRP's price are connected, but they don't move together. Owning XRP doesn't give you a piece of Ripple. The company got 25% more valuable in four months while XRP fell over 60% from its high, and that alone shows how separately these two things trade.

Deutsche Bank, Aviva Investors, and Société Générale all started using Ripple's technology in February 2026, and the XRP price still dropped roughly 30% the same month. Those deals are about Ripple's software handling payments, foreign exchange, and settlement for banks—none of them need the XRP token to work. Most banks using Ripple treat it like any other payment vendor, as they get faster cross-border transfers without ever touching XRP.

Ripple does have one product where XRP plays a direct role—On-Demand Liquidity (ODL). ODL works by converting the sender's currency into XRP, moving it across the XRP Ledger in seconds, and converting it back into the recipient's currency on the other side. That's the only part of Ripple's business that creates actual buying and selling demand for the token. ODL is mostly used by remittance firms and smaller institutions like SBI Remit in Japan, Tranglo in Southeast Asia, and Bitso in Latin America. In most ODL setups, the bank doesn't even hold XRP as exchanges handle the conversion on both ends, and the bank just sees fiat in and fiat out.

On March 15, Ripple CTO Emeritus, David Schwartz, got into a public back-and-forth with Zach Rynes from the Chainlink community over this exact issue. Rynes' argument was that XRP holders fund Ripple's growth through token sales, shareholders get the corporate upside, and holding XRP gives you zero exposure to Ripple's success as a company. Schwartz's response was that if Ripple's XRP sales keep the price lower, that same dynamic gives new buyers a cheaper entry point—so it cuts both ways.

The buyback could help XRP indirectly by giving early shareholders and employees a way to cash out without dumping XRP on the open market. Ripple is also adding more stablecoins to the XRP Ledger—RLUSD for U.S. dollars, SG-FORGE's EURCV for euros, and a new regulated AUDD stablecoin for Australian dollars—and each one opens up another market where ODL can run with XRP as the bridge currency. But right now, none of that has moved the XRP price yet.

Ripple's success starts helping XRP when banks stop using Ripple as a payments vendor and start settling with XRP through On-Demand Liquidity. Until that happens, Ripple can keep growing as a company while XRP stays flat. One major global bank running real volume through ODL with XRP would move the needle more than any partnership announcement or valuation number.

Ripple already has working stablecoins on the XRP Ledger covering dollars, euros, and Australian dollars, and ODL needs stablecoins on both sides of a transaction to work—so each new one opens up another market where XRP can serve as the bridge.

Bitso in Latin America is already running this in production, using both XRP and RLUSD to settle cross-border transactions between the U.S. and Latin America. If more corridors follow that model, the demand for XRP as a bridge currency starts growing from actual payment flows.

Ripple is worth $50 billion and growing because it built a real payments business that banks want to use. XRP is at $1.42 because most of that business doesn't touch the token. That only changes when ODL goes from a niche remittance product to something major banks settle through every day, and so far, that hasn't happened.

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