Here’s what you missed at XRP Tokyo
This week, 3,000 people gathered to talk about XRP at its largest Asian conference.
Asia’s biggest XRP conference just wrapped in Tokyo at 400-year-old Japanese garden in Tokyo, with Ripple as title sponsor. More than 3,000 attendees showed up. More than 20 speakers took the stage.
It was not a backward-looking meetup. It was proof that already, today, as well as for the foreseeable future, massive financial companies are deploying capital and infrastructure onto the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
The conference headline? $33 trillion.
Market Context
Ripple didn’t bury the lede.
A presentation flyer circulating in-person dropped one figure that prefaced every conversation. On-chain stablecoin volume is projected to exceed $33 trillion in 2026.
To put that in context, that’s larger than the US GDP. And it is starting to flow onto the XRPL.
The message from Ripple to fintech executives was blunt. Stablecoins are no longer optional.
The question isn’t whether to adopt them. The question is how fast you can integrate them before you’re obsolete.
The speaker list also told quite a story.
Speaking on stage was the VP of SBI Ripple Asia, SungMo Park from a16z Crypto, Tatsuya Yamada from Rakuten Wallet, Eiji Kobayashi from Securitize Japan, and representatives from Evernorth and the University of Tokyo. Christina Chan, Tatsuya Kohrogi, and Markus Infanger delivered keynotes. J. Ayo Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX, also took the stage.
Two major SBI moves gave the Tokyo conference real-world grounding.
SBI discussed its recent ¥10 billion (~$64 million) blockchain bond, paying returns directly in XRP. That is a first for a major Japanese financial institution, proving that XRP functions for institutional-grade yield infrastructure.
SBI VC Trade also began distributing RLUSD during the Tokyo conference. The rollout of Ripple’s USD-backed stablecoin fully collateralized by U.S. Treasuries and cash fulfills an August 2025 MOU and puts the stablecoin in front of Japanese institutional and retail investors through one of the country’s most regulated exchanges.
SBI Ripple Asia has also partnered with the Asia Web3 Alliance Japan to back startups building on the XRP Ledger, extending the ecosystem’s pipeline.
News
NY Times exposé identifies Adam Back as bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto (NYT)
Iran seeks Strait of Hormuz passage fees paid in crypto (FT)
Morgan Stanley $MS bitcoin ETF $MSBT records $30M in day-one inflows (CoinTelegraph)
White House report: stablecoin yield would have negligible impact on bank lending (WhiteHouse.gov)
Treasury Sec. Bessent urges Congress to pass crypto market structure bill (Reuters)
Thailand proposes approval requirements for major shareholders behind crypto operations (SEC Thailand)
South Korea to regulate stablecoins as FX payment instruments, require real-world asset tokens held in trusts (Seoul Economic Daily)
SEC appoints David Woodcock as new Enforcement Division director (SEC)
Treasury issues AML directive for stablecoin issuers (Treasury)
Dubai releases virtual asset issuance guidance (VARA)
Eightco $ORBS WLD holdings 277,222,975 (PRNewswire)
CleanSpark $CLSK Mar’26: BTC produced 658 | OpHR 50 EH/s | BTC sold 500 | BTC holdings 13,561 (PRNewswire)
Cango $CANG Mar’26: OpHR 37 EH/s (PRNewswire)
Canary Capital files to launch PEPE memecoin ETF (SEC)
Shareholders approve Brag House $TBH merger with House of Doge (GlobeNewswire)
Cathedra Bitcoin $CGTTF signs 12MW Kentucky hosting agreement (Newsfile)
Yuga Labs settles lawsuit over Bored Ape copycat tokens (CoinDesk)
Bithumb pursues legal action to recover 7 BTC lost in payment error (CoinTelegraph)
Standard Chartered $SCBFF eyes merger with crypto custodian Zodia (Bloomberg)
Circle $CRCL launches full-stack stablecoin settlements platform (BusinessWire)
MoonPay to power crypto payments inside Paysafe $PSFE (PR Newswire)
SOL Strategies $STKE acquires Darklake Labs for zero-knowledge privacy (Newsfile)
Securitize tokenizes shares of Currenc Group $CURR (PRNewswire)
Nothing in this newsletter is financial or investment advice. We summarize news for informational and entertainment purposes only. We do not provide advisory services, guidance, or information regarding trading or investing. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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Here’s how XRP Tokyo 2026 changed the game…