On January 28, 2025, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the XRP Ledger's decentralized exchange (DEX) recorded a remarkable $400 million in swap trading volume for January, averaging approximately $17 million per day. Since its launch in 2024, the DEX has processed over $1 billion in cryptocurrency swaps.
Garlinghouse emphasized that this rapid growth is one of the reasons 2024 is pivotal for Ripple. He noted promising developments for Ripple's USD-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, and the application for an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) as key factors for the year.
JP Morgan predicts that if the XRP ETF applications by asset managers like Bitwise and WisdomTree are approved, inflows into XRP could exceed $8 billion.
Since Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election on November 5, 2024, XRP's price has surged by 500%, with a market capitalization surpassing $180 billion as of January 28. Trump's administration is expected to appoint crypto-friendly leaders to major financial regulatory bodies, potentially accelerating the approval of an XRP spot ETF by 2025, with prediction markets indicating a 73% probability.