Uphold president says XRP’s yield push and RWA growth are fueling investor interest

Nancy Beaton, President of Uphold U.S says XRP is growing more attractive because retail investors want to earn money from holding XRP. At the same time, institutions want to move real-world assets onto blockchain.

Beaton shared her views in a special segment of Ripple’s “XRP in a Minute” show from the XRP Las Vegas 2026 conference. The event brought together thousands of people to discuss the future of XRP. Beaton said XRP is gaining traction among both retail and institutional investors as blockchain markets shift toward income-generating digital assets and real-world asset tokenization.

What does “earning yield on XRP” mean?

Across crypto markets, investors have increasingly sought yield-bearing opportunities amid global macroeconomic uncertainty and lower returns from traditional savings products. Industry data and commentary suggest this shift is accelerating interest in blockchain-based financial products that can generate passive income.

Earning yield on XRP means gaining interest on holding XRP, just like bank deposits or shares. 

The XRP Ledger lets you deposit XRP into a shared pool from which borrowers can take loans and repay them with interest. You then get a share of that interest, depending on how much you put in.

Speaking at XRP Las Vegas 2026, Nancy Beaton, U.S. President of Uphold, said: 

Retail interest is tied to earning yield directly on-chain.

Nancy Beaton

What makes the product more appealing to people is the safeguards. Vault operators set aside a portion of the pool to absorb any losses first before they affect regular depositors. 

How close is the lending system to going live?

The XLS-66 Lending Protocol needs at least 80% of the validators running the XRPL to be on board. The protocol must also hold that level of support for 2 weeks straight. 

In the meantime, XRP holders can earn interest through the automated market maker (AMM). The AMM is a system in which investors deposit two types of coins into a shared pool, earning a small interest whenever someone trades with those coins and pays a fee. 

Why are banks and big financial firms interested in XRP?

Banks, asset managers, and investment funds want to move their operations to blockchain because the traditional approach is expensive and full of delays.

Most of these banks currently use SWIFT to move large sums of money around the world. But the system can take days and costs $25 to $50 per transfer, which is expensive for any large institution moving billions a day.

However, the same transactions on the XRPL take 3 to 5 seconds and cost less than a penny. Banks can save a fortune with these rates.

XRPL also provides tools that allow issuers to freeze tokens, restrict who can hold them, and reverse transfers in emergencies. 

Which companies are already putting real assets on XRPL?

UK-regulated digital securities exchange, Archax, launched the first tokenized money market fund on XRPL. This gave users digital access to abrdn’s £3.8 billion liquidity fund.

The exchange also promised to add another $1 billion in tokenized assets onto XRPL by mid-2026.

Ondo Finance also launched its OUSG token on XRPL. The token is backed by the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) and uses Ripple’s RLUSD for transactions.

In fact, Ondo Finance, JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ripple completed the first cross-border, cross-institution redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund in under five seconds.

A traditional wire transfer of the same value and distance would have taken 1-3 business days to complete. 

Other institutions like Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, and Aviva Investors also made moves onto the XRPL ledger in early 2026. 

Guggenheim and OpenEden have also added tokenized Treasury products, while the Brazilian bank Braza plans to issue regulated stablecoins on XRPL.

In Australia, Meld Gold is using XRPL to issue digital certificates representing physical gold and silver.