Franklin Templeton Puts $150 Million on the XRP Ledger as XRP Price Slides

Two numbers tell the XRP story this week, and they point in opposite directions. Franklin Templeton has issued about $150 million in tokenised money market fund shares on the XRP Ledger, nearly quadrupling its footprint on the network in 48 hours. Over the same stretch, $XRP slipped toward $1.28, down roughly 3 percent on the day and well below the $1.40 level it was chasing a week ago. Institutional usage up, token price down. Here is how both can be true at once.

What did Franklin Templeton actually do on the XRP Ledger?

Franklin's issuing account recorded two $75 million subscription receipts on Wednesday 22 October. On Thursday it followed with two issuances of roughly 72.18 million sgBENJI shares each, priced at $1.039 per share. Before the move, about 48 million shares sat on the XRP Ledger. The count is now close to 193 million, worth roughly $200 million at the transaction price.

sgBENJI is the tokenised share class of Franklin's OnChain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund, launched in November 2025 with DBS for the Singapore market. It earns treasury-style yield that accrues in the share price. Eligible clients can already pledge the tokens as collateral on Bybit and DBS has said it will explore lending against them.

Why does one wallet hold all 193 million shares?

Every newly issued share landed in a single address, which now holds the fund's entire token balance on the XRP Ledger. That wallet shares its authorised signers with Franklin's issuing account. In plain terms, this looks like Franklin or a distribution partner holding shares on behalf of clients rather than 150 separate investors buying onchain.

That matters for how you read the number. It is a sign that a large asset manager trusts the XRP Ledger for settlement and record-keeping at scale. It is not evidence of a wave of new retail buyers. The fund's 30 September factsheet listed total net assets of about $75 million across all networks it uses, so the October subscriptions roughly triple the fund in one go. The next factsheet will show whether redemptions elsewhere offset part of that.

Does sgBENJI buy any XRP?

No. The fund holds short-term US government paper, not XRP. Issuing and moving shares on the XRP Ledger costs a tiny amount of XRP in transaction fees, which is burned, but $150 million of fund shares translates into a negligible amount of buy pressure on the token.

This is the part the "XRP to the moon on RWA news" crowd keeps getting wrong. Tokenised funds on the XRP Ledger raise the network's relevance and give Ripple a stronger pitch to banks. They do not create direct demand for the token in any size that moves the chart.

Where does Franklin now rank among XRPL issuers?

According to RWA.xyz, Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin leads tokenised assets on the XRP Ledger with about $930 million. Franklin now sits second at roughly $193 million, ahead of Ondo Finance at $185 million. The XRP Ledger's real-world-asset stack is therefore led by a stablecoin and two tokenised treasury funds, which is exactly the "boring plumbing" profile institutions prefer.

The timing is not accidental. Ripple partnered with Arf this week to bring RLUSD settlement liquidity to the ledger, Evernorth is preparing to deploy a 473 million XRP treasury with Ripple, Coinbase, Kraken and BitGo, and the XRP Ledger is now listed as the sole token rail in Singapore's expanded Project BLOOM pilot. The institutional story around XRP has rarely been this crowded.

So why is XRP price falling anyway?

Because the token trades with the market, not with the press releases. Bitcoin fell below $82,000 this week on a day that saw roughly $635 million in spot ETF outflows and more than $400 million in liquidations across crypto. XRP had defended $1.30 for several trading days and lost it on Thursday, trading near $1.28 as risk assets sold off on a surge in oil prices and weak equity markets.

Two XRP-specific issues added weight. The XRP Ledger recovered from a network slowdown this week while a critical security upgrade was pushed back by two weeks, and the Franklin wallet concentration sparked a round of "is that really demand?" commentary. Neither is a disaster. Both gave short-term traders a reason to stay on the sidelines.

What should XRP holders take from this?

Separate the two timelines. The institutional adoption trend on the XRP Ledger is real, measurable onchain and accelerating: $200 million from Franklin, $930 million in RLUSD, central bank pilots in Asia. If you hold XRP as a long-term bet on Ripple's banking network, this week strengthened the thesis.

If you trade XRP on a weekly horizon, none of that helps you. The levels that matter are $1.30 as the line to reclaim and $1.20 as the next support if the broader market keeps sliding. Watch Bitcoin's ETF flows and the oil price before you watch Franklin's wallet.

You can track the live XRP price and market-wide liquidation data on our charts page.