Aviva puts $30B fund on XRP Ledger as Ripple courts finance

Aviva Investors tokenized its US dollar liquidity fund on the XRP Ledger, managing over £30 billion in liquidity strategies through a Ripple partnership.

"Crypto networks will eventually be judged by the utility and revenue they create," Yuval Rooz, chief executive of Digital Asset, said.

Aviva said tokenization does not change a fund's underlying assets, net asset value, or risk profile — it simply records ownership digitally, which could make transactions faster and more efficient. The firm will work with Ripple through 2026 to explore more tokenization opportunities.

The move shows growing interest in using the XRP Ledger for real-world assets, even as XRP itself trades near year-to-date lows. The token slipped over 3 percent to $1 on Bitstamp on Aug. 11, with its market capitalization dropping to $62.8 billion, according to market data.

Utility Could Separate Winners From Losers

Rooz pushed back against the idea that banks must wait for the US Clarity Act before using public blockchain networks, saying banks are already using public chains, including Canton. Around 50 vendors are preparing applications for Canton ahead of the DTCC's planned production launch in October, he said. He pointed to the scale of US financial markets, with equities and Treasuries together approaching $70 trillion, arguing the industry should think beyond crypto's current billion-dollar total value locked figures.

Rooz warned that many crypto networks have valuations disconnected from the actual economic activity they generate, arguing that networks making promises without delivering useful products could eventually lose most of their value. He cited Hyperliquid as an example of a network generating revenue and using it to burn tokens, creating a model closer to a profitable public company returning value through buybacks. He also criticized shifting industry narratives, noting how crypto moved from permissionless systems toward privacy and control.

According to Rooz, maintaining a consistent product strategy helped Digital Asset nearly triple its valuation over 24 months, even while the broader market declined around 40 percent over the past year. The latest funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included Apollo, CME, HSBC, SoFi, SBI Japan, and Hana Bank Korea, with Shinhan Financial Group joining at the last moment after the round became oversubscribed.

The institutional push comes as XRP faces a separate challenge on price. Analyst Vincent Van Code warned that thin trading volumes make the asset vulnerable to market manipulation, cautioning of a cascade toward the $0.95 level. He noted 24-hour trading volume on Binance had dropped to $68 million from over $1 billion, with order books "super thin" and only $4 million in sells triggering a drop to the $0.95 level.

Despite the price pressure, XRP continues to draw institutional attention. Chicago-based hedge fund Wolverine Asset Management revealed a new position in the Bitwise XRP ETF in a recent 13F-HR filing, while Ripple secured a crypto asset service provider authorization from Luxembourg to support its European expansion.

The divergence between XRP's price and its underlying network activity shows the tension Rooz described: adoption milestones are accumulating, but token valuations have yet to reflect the utility being built. For Ripple, the Aviva deal is a test of whether the XRP Ledger can convert traditional finance partnerships into sustained demand for the token.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.