I discovered an interesting analysis from a former Ripple insider that completely challenges our way of thinking about the XRP price. William Sculley, who worked at the early days of Ripple, just shared a detailed reflection on why upcoming institutional capital won’t really care about the Ripple coin price, but rather about the returns that can be generated with it.

The logic is actually quite simple when you think about it. The world’s largest hedge funds — Citadel, Millennium, Point72 — have long been using what are called delta-neutral strategies. It’s an approach where you don’t try to bet on the market’s direction. Instead, you capture spreads, fees, premiums. Whether XRP goes up 50% or crashes just as much, these strategies remain balanced and continue to generate steady returns of 8 to 15% per year. It’s the complete opposite of the volatility risk we usually see in crypto.

But here’s where it’s striking. The crypto market is about 2 trillion dollars, but less than 5% of that capital is actually used to generate yields through DeFi. The rest is sleeping or barely generating anything on centralized platforms. Compare that to traditional asset managers like BlackRock or PIMCO — they rarely keep more than 5% in cash. They put the rest to work. In crypto, we’re almost the opposite. That’s a huge inefficiency.

What really interested me is how Sculley positions XRP at the heart of this transformation. His concept is what he calls Financial Grade DeFi — institutional yield strategies fully on-chain, accessible to anyone, with no minimums, no intermediaries. Imagine XRP holders could soon access the same tools as the ultra-rich — spreads, covered calls, structured products built around XRP.

If institutions can truly generate reliable yields independent of market direction by using XRP as collateral, then the justification for deploying massive capital into this asset becomes much stronger. The Ripple coin price is no longer the main focus — it’s the ability to generate stable returns that matters.

What’s also interesting is that this infrastructure is already under construction. Institutional strategies are gradually migrating on-chain. The real question is just who benefits first — and whether ordinary hodlers position their assets before this next wave of capital really arrives. Currently, XRP is trading around $1.43, a slight decrease of 0.69% over 24 hours, but according to this logic, short-term movements shouldn’t really be the main focus for institutional investors seeking sustainable yields.