XRP price prediction: what happens to 473 million XRP after the Nasdaq vote?

XRP costs $1.51 on Wednesday evening, and the number this day turns on lies exactly one cent below that. Since September 22, $1.50 has been the line on which every trading day is decided. Today a date is added that has nothing to do with the chart: in New York, the shareholders of a special purpose vehicle vote on whether a treasury holding 473,276,430 XRP comes to the Nasdaq as a share. And tomorrow morning Ripple's monthly escrow window opens. Two dates in 24 hours, both with numbers, both with consequences for the quantity of XRP reaching the market. This article sorts out what among it can move the price, what counts for you in Germany, and where the levels lie to the upside and the downside. The running assessment sits on our XRP forecast.

What is decided in New York tonight: 473 million XRP and the ticker XRPN

Up for the vote is the merger of Armada Acquisition Corp. II with Evernorth Holdings. Armada is a special purpose vehicle, a SPAC in the jargon: a listed shell with no business of its own that raises capital and then combines with a real company so that the latter is listed without a conventional IPO. The shareholder meeting is set for Wednesday at noon Eastern time, which corresponds to 6 p.m. in Germany. The deadline by which shareholders could redeem their shares already expired on September 28.

If the vote passes and the remaining conditions are met, the merged company is to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN. According to the figures in the proxy materials, the company projects at least 473,276,430 XRP on its own balance sheet at closing. Ripple itself contributes 126,791,458 XRP of that, or 26.8 percent of the holding. Behind the plan, according to the FinanceFeeds report, stand the SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken, GSR and Arrington Capital alongside Ripple. The US Securities and Exchange Commission declared the registration on Form S-4 effective on August 27. Evernorth expects around $1 billion in gross proceeds from the transaction, the bulk of which is to flow into building the XRP treasury.

One figure in that list deserves a second look, because it shows what the entry point looks like. Evernorth bought 84,365,876 XRP on the open market, for around $214 million and at an average price of $2.5366 per token. At today's price of $1.51 the same tokens are worth roughly $127 million. That is a paper loss of around 40 percent on this part of the holding before the share has even traded. Anyone buying XRPN after a listing is therefore not buying a fresh treasury at market price, but a balance sheet with a history.

XRP price at $1.51: $1.50 has carried almost every daily close since September 22

The price data in this article come from CoinGecko, as of Wednesday, September 30, shortly before 7 p.m. German time. XRP trades at $1.51, up 1.42 percent within 24 hours. Over seven days it is down 1.31 percent, over 30 days up 9.35 percent. The day's range ran from $1.48 to $1.54. Market capitalisation stands at $95.27 billion, turnover over the past 24 hours at $3.30 billion. The price is 58.6 percent below its all-time high of $3.65.

More interesting than the daily bar is how narrow the past few days have been. The daily levels since September 22 read $1.5350, $1.5713, $1.5011, $1.5340, $1.5681, $1.5273, $1.5165, $1.4959 and $1.4901. Nine values within a range of around 5.5 percent, and every single one of them within sight of $1.50. On September 28 the price slipped below that level, which we reported on that day; it has reclaimed it twice since. A level touched that often is not a curiosity but the price on which buyers and sellers currently agree. Which is precisely why one event with news value is enough to dislodge it.

Escrow on October 1: up to 1 billion XRP out of 31.98 billion held in trust

Escrow is not a marketing term at XRP but a function of the XRP Ledger. Ripple has placed a large part of its own holding into time-controlled contracts that open on the first of each month. Up to 1 billion XRP can be released; what is not needed has historically moved back into new contracts and is thereby locked again.

The quantities behind it are given in weekly report 39 from XRP Insights, as of September 26: 31.98 billion XRP sit in trust, which is 32.0 percent of the hard-capped total supply of 100 billion. A further 4.74 billion XRP sit in operational wallets. On the venues observed there were 21.14 billion XRP, a decline of 625.9 million over the reporting week.

Why the release is nonetheless more than a formality is shown by a simple calculation: 1 billion XRP corresponds to around $1.51 billion at today's price. That is about 46 percent of the entire daily turnover of $3.30 billion. Even if only a fraction were actually sold, it would meet a market that does not absorb that order of magnitude in passing. How the release on October 1 unfolds in detail, we wrote up separately yesterday.

XRP ETFs hold 1.16 to 1.18 billion tokens: a good one percent of the fixed supply

The second source of demand alongside treasury companies is exchange-traded funds in the United States. The counts differ slightly, so here are both: XRP Insights reports 1.16 billion XRP across seven funds as of September 26, with assets of $1.76 billion. A tally from the end of September arrives at 1.18 billion XRP and around $1.82 billion. Both figures correspond to a good one percent of the fixed total supply of 100 billion XRP.

Inflows in the week from September 18 to 26 were positive at a net 34.0 million XRP, but uneven: an outflow of 716,000 XRP on Monday, an inflow of 12.7 million on Tuesday, 12.5 million on Wednesday, 9.9 million on Thursday, and another outflow of 473,000 on Friday. Cumulatively, the US spot products stand at around $1.79 billion of inflows.

For you in Germany there is a restriction here that most reports overlook: these funds are US products and are regularly not tradable for retail investors in this country through the usual brokerage route, because they lack the European investor information. The exchange route in Germany instead runs via certificates and exchange-traded notes, which we have sorted through in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany. The US inflows are therefore a sentiment gauge for you, not a way to buy.

Two routes to XRP: the XRPN share against the token in your own account

Should XRPN actually list, two very different things sit side by side. The token is the asset itself. The share is a stake in a company whose balance sheet consists predominantly of that asset. Three differences lie between them, barely noticeable in calm market phases and very noticeable in turbulent ones.

First, the premium. Shares in treasury companies rarely trade at exactly the value of their holdings. If the price sits above it, you pay more than a dollar for a dollar of XRP; if it sits below, you get a discount that can also persist. Second, the management. Evernorth is announcing an actively managed treasury, meaning purchases, sales and further financing. The convertible bonds already issued, $30 million at 4 percent interest maturing in 2031, are an example of how the shareholder structure can change. Third, the currency. A Nasdaq listing accounts in dollars, and your portfolio carries the exchange rate risk with it.

Holding period, exemption threshold, withholding tax: Section 23 and Section 20 side by side

The biggest difference between the two routes is not in the chart but in tax law, and for German investors it is the most tangible point of the whole subject.

If you hold XRP directly, Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies, the private disposal transaction. If you sell within a year of buying, the gain is taxable, and at your personal income tax rate. In return there is an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year, in force since 2024, which aggregates all private disposal transactions. An exemption threshold is not an allowance: anyone above it with a gain of 1,001 euros pays tax on the full amount. After a holding period of more than a year the gain is tax-free. For allocating the units sold, practice calculates per wallet on a first-in, first-out basis.

A share such as XRPN, by contrast, falls under Section 20 of the Income Tax Act, that is, under investment income. There the withholding tax of 25 percent applies, plus the solidarity surcharge of 5.5 percent on that tax, together 26.375 percent, and church tax where applicable. The saver's lump-sum allowance is 1,000 euros per person per year, or 2,000 euros for joint assessment. There is no holding period here after which a gain would become tax-free. If the account sits with a foreign provider, nobody deducts the tax automatically, and the transaction then belongs in the KAP annex of the tax return. Which tools log the transactions cleanly is set out in our comparison of crypto tax tools. What is binding in the end is the advice of your tax adviser; this article does not replace it.

Buying XRP in Germany under MiCA: CASP licence, ETPs on the exchange, your own wallet

The European regulation on markets in crypto-assets has applied in full since December 30, 2024. MiCA requires every provider that trades or holds crypto-assets for clients to hold an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider, called a CASP in the text of the regulation. It is granted by BaFin or another supervisor in the EU, and the authorisation then applies across the entire single market. Whether your provider holds one is stated in BaFin's company database and, as a rule, in the imprint. That is the first check, one that can be done today in five minutes, and it is independent of how the vote in New York turns out. Which trading venues are authorised in Germany and what they cost, we have set side by side in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

Custody at XRP comes with a peculiarity worth knowing when you open your first account of your own. An account on the XRP Ledger requires a base reserve of 1 XRP, which stays permanently tied up and cannot be sent. Every additional object in the ledger, such as a trust line or an escrow, ties up a further 0.2 XRP. At today's price that is around $1.51 for the base reserve. Anyone transferring XRP to an exchange also needs the so-called destination tag, a number that assigns the deposit to the right client account. Without that tag the transfer lands in the provider's omnibus account, and retrieving it is laborious to hopeless.

Leverage on XRP: the liquidation price at 10x sits in the middle of the September range

Anyone wanting to play the two dates with a leveraged product should calculate beforehand rather than afterwards. Liquidation means the exchange closes the position by force as soon as the collateral deposited is used up. For a tenfold leveraged purchase, a decline of around ten percent is enough. From today's price of $1.51 that threshold sits at about $1.359, before fees and financing costs are counted in. At fivefold leverage it sits at around $1.208.

These numbers acquire their meaning through September: the monthly low was $1.2833 on September 16. A tenfold leveraged buy position opened at the start of the month at today's price level would not have survived that move. A fivefold leveraged one would have scraped through. Added to that is the financing rate, known in trading as the funding rate: a payment that flows between buyers and sellers of perpetual contracts at short intervals and can make a held position noticeably more expensive over days. Anyone trading such contracts will find the terms of the authorised providers in our broker comparison.

Two scenarios to mid-October: $1.5713 above, $1.2833 below

The following levels are derived from the price data of the past 30 days and are not analysts' price targets. What they describe is where the market last turned.

In the benign case the merger is approved, the bulk of the escrow release moves back into new contracts as in previous months, and ETF inflows stay positive. The first serious hurdle is then the monthly high of September 23 at $1.5713, around 4.1 percent above today's level. Above that begins the round area around $1.60, which was not reached once in September.

In the adverse case the vote is postponed or fails, and a larger part of the released quantity stays in motion. Then the day's low at $1.48 comes up for testing first, after that the monthly low of September 16 at $1.2833. That would be 15.0 percent below today's price. Between the two scenarios lies a range of around 19 percent, and both hang on events that become known within the next 24 hours. That is precisely why position size carries more weight here than direction.

XRP after the Nasdaq vote: How to proceed now

1. Check the buying route and its authorisation. Look in the imprint or in BaFin's company database to see whether your trading venue holds a MiCA authorisation, and compare the fees before you move anything. The overview sits in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Note the holding period for each position. Write down the purchase date for every XRP position. Only then do you know which sale still falls under the one-year period and which no longer does. Tools that track this automatically are in our comparison of tax tools.
3. Work out the liquidation price before you use leverage. Enter your intended leverage and entry into your provider's calculator and hold the result against the monthly low of $1.2833. If the distance does not fit, the leverage is too large. The terms are in the broker comparison.

(As of September 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)