WSJ says Ripple is becoming a Wall Street rival, and Paxos adds XRP for its bank partners

The Wall Street Journal reported on October 7 that Ripple has spread into nearly every corner of crypto, from stablecoins to custody, and is now edging into Wall Street's own territory. The same day, Paxos said its Crypto Brokerage platform now supports XRP. Both stories are about the same shift, crypto-native firms taking on jobs that banks used to own.

What the Journal reported

The Journal's focus is Ripple Prime, the company's institutional brokerage arm, which finances swaps for leveraged exchange-traded funds. As relayed by U.Today, one leveraged fund pays the overnight bank funding rate plus 4%, about 8% right now, and there are 593 leveraged ETFs in the U.S. with more than $256 billion in assets. The Journal also noted that non-bank firms like Ripple work under different risk rules than banks, which gives them an edge in this business. We could not read the Journal's full article, which is paywalled, so these figures come from outlets quoting it. The broader description is in Coinpedia's summary.

What this does and does not mean

The 8% is what one fund pays for financing, not Ripple's profit, and nothing in the reporting we could access gives Ripple's revenue or margin from the business. Competing with banks in a niche is also not the same as replacing them. Ripple has bought traditional finance companies in recent years, including the brokerage that became Ripple Prime, and its ambition is a matter of public record. The Journal's framing is that the pressure is real in leveraged ETF financing, a corner of the market where rules for banks are tight.

Paxos adds XRP

On October 7, Paxos announced that partners using its Crypto Brokerage can now offer XRP buying, selling, holding, deposits and withdrawals. Paxos supplies the custody, licensing and trade execution. In its announcement Paxos cited XRP's 8.1 million wallets and a market value near $95 billion. The named partners include PayPal, Venmo, Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab and Mercado Libre.

The caveat matters. Each partner chooses which assets appear in its own app, so the announcement does not mean XRP is arriving at those platforms. Charles Schwab's August update, for example, added SOL, AVAX and LINK but not XRP. Watch for individual partner announcements rather than assuming the list.

The thread connecting them

Banks are buying crypto services from outside firms, and crypto firms are building bank-like businesses. We tracked a similar arrangement in Kraken's work with Singapore-based banks, and the live XRP price is on our crypto page.

Sources: U.Today and Coinpedia, relaying The Wall Street Journal; crypto.news on the Paxos announcement; Crypto Briefing. Information, not investment advice.