The XRP price slipped by 3% on Wednesday, even as Ripple President Monica Long laid out one of the most bullish institutional outlooks for crypto to date.
In her opinion, 2026 will mark a decisive shift from experimentation to full-scale production across global finance.
Monica Long shared a detailed post and an accompanying report, indicating that the industry is entering its “production era.”
She says trusted infrastructure and real-world utility finally push banks, corporates, and financial service providers beyond pilots and into scaled deployment.
“After one of crypto’s most exciting years (and Ripple’s), the industry is entering its production era,” Long started.
According to the Ripple executive, 2026 will deliver the institutionalization of crypto, where:
At the center of Long’s thesis are stablecoins, which she says are transitioning from an alternative payment rail into the foundation of global settlement. This aligns with the Coinbase CEO’s prediction that banks will eventually demand interest-paying stablecoins.
Monica Long notes that major payment networks and fintech firms are already embedding digital dollars directly into existing systems.
“Stablecoins will be the foundation for global settlement, not an alternative rail,” Long said, pointing to Visa, Stripe, and major financial institutions hard-wiring stablecoins into payment flows.
While retail adoption continues, she emphasized that B2B payments are the real growth engine, with corporates using digital dollars to unlock real-time liquidity and capital efficiency.
The Ripple president also highlighted data showing that B2B stablecoin payments reached an annualized run rate of $76 billion last year, up from less than $100 million per month in early 2023.
The prize, she noted, is freeing up trillions of dollars in trapped working capital sitting idle on corporate balance sheets.
Long’s second major prediction is that crypto will no longer be viewed as speculative by institutions, but as core financial infrastructure.
In 2026, she expects roughly 50% of Fortune 500 companies to have crypto exposure or formalized digital asset treasury strategies.
“Crypto is no longer speculative — it’s becoming the operating layer of modern finance,” she wrote, forecasting active use of tokenized assets, on-chain T-bills, stablecoins, and programmable financial instruments across corporate balance sheets.
She also pointed to the rapid expansion of crypto ETFs, which now provide institutional access but still represent just 1-2% of the US ETF market, suggesting significant room for growth.
As adoption scales, Long expects capital markets to follow. She predicts that 5-10% of global settlement activity will move on-chain, driven by tokenization and the mobility of stablecoin-based collateral.
At the same time, crypto custody is entering a consolidation phase. With $8.6 billion in crypto M&A activity recorded in 2025, Long expects custody to become the next major battleground, with commoditization driving vertical integration and multi-custodian strategies.
By 2026, she estimates that more than half of the world’s top 50 banks will formalize new custody relationships.
Long also highlighted the convergence of blockchain and AI, where smart contracts, AI models, and privacy-preserving zero-knowledge proofs automate treasury management, collateral optimization, and risk assessment in real time.
Despite the sweeping vision, the market response was muted as XRP price slipped by over 3% to $1.90, effectively falling below the $2 mark.
This XRP price decline reflects the ongoing disconnect between short-term price action and long-term infrastructure narratives. It happens even as Ripple positions 2026 as a defining year for institutional crypto adoption.
