Guggenheim Treasury Services is moving its crypto-linked debt product to the XRP Ledger in direct collaboration with Ripple, aiming to expand its reach in the blockchain finance world. The move comes after Guggenheim’s first rollout of its digital commercial paper product last year on Ethereum. Since that launch, over $280 million has been issued, and the new partnership with Ripple now brings that same product to a different chain, according to a report by Bloomberg. Ripple is backing the launch with a $10 million investment into the Treasury-backed asset, according to Markus Infanger, senior vice president at RippleX. “We’re also exploring its use in payments and looking at ways to make it purchasable with our stablecoin,” Markus said. He didn’t give a timeline on when the stablecoin would launch, but the strategy makes it clear Ripple isn’t treating this as a one-off. Ripple injects $10 million and eyes payments use The product—fully secured by US Treasuries and issued with maturity options up to 397 days—is available daily and built to suit institutional demand. It’s being managed using the Zeconomy platform. That means it’s tokenized from start to finish, from investment to settlement, and can be handled entirely on-chain without needing middlemen. The XRP Ledger is currently one of the smaller players in the crypto tokenization space. Excluding stablecoins, the network only holds around $117 million in tokenized assets. In contrast, the total amount of real-world tokenized assets tracked across blockchains sits at $23.4 billion. Most of that is tied up in Ethereum and private networks. But Ripple isn’t trying to compete on size yet—it’s focusing on function. It’s also running pilot tests to connect real estate deeds directly to blockchain tokens, essentially turning home ownership into on-chain entries. This push puts Ripple in line with other traditional finance giants entering the same race. Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, and Galaxy Digital, the investment firm run by Michael Novogratz, are also building tokenization strategies. Galaxy is reportedly in discussions with US regulators to tokenize its own shares. Tokenization struggles with adoption and regulators The big issue remains adoption. Outside of stablecoins, tokenized assets haven’t picked up momentum. Only around 67,530 entities—mainly institutions—hold tokenized financial assets right now. That’s just a fraction of the overall market, and it makes up only 0.003% of the total value of global assets, based on figures from rwa.xyz. A lot of that has to do with US regulations. Over the past several years, regulators under previous administrations pushed financial institutions to avoid crypto altogether. Tokenized securities, even though they follow the same rules as traditional assets, were often lumped into the same “high-risk” category as shitcoins. That drove big banks and wealth managers toward AI investments instead. They just didn’t want the legal headache. Now though, as President Trump is back in the White House and the 2025 environment shifts, some of that resistance might start to ease. A bunch of money market funds are already planning to issue tokenized versions backed by US Treasuries. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is even reviewing guidelines to let tokenized assets be used as collateral—a key step if this sector is going to get serious. Despite the excitement, not everyone’s sold. Some players in the space are warning about overreach. They say that tokenizing everything could lead to unnecessary risks. Things like hacks, regulatory confusion, and increased investor fees are real problems. There’s also concern that certain assets—especially illiquid ones like real estate or hard-to-sell bonds—might get tokenized when they shouldn’t be, just to chase hype. A 2024 report from Opimas, a research firm, warned that many tokenization startups are either cash-strapped or close to shutting down completely. Ripple and Guggenheim are betting that anchoring to real-world assets like US Treasuries might be the one model that actually sticks. Cryptopolitan Academy: Coming Soon - A New Way to Earn Passive Income with DeFi in 2025. Learn More
