Ripple National Trust Bank Final Approval: What It Means for XRP

that investors may have thought that in buying XRP they were buying a security that gave them shares or some ownership in Ripple. Why is that wrong on its face?

Well, first of all, Tyler, thanks for having me. I think this is an important issue and I think there has been confusion out there. Ripple as a company, as Kate introduced, we have shareholders. We've raised capital from venture capitalists, from actually institutions and even banks like Standard Charter is a shareholder. XRP is a separate thing altogether.

It is a currency that trades in the marketplace.

That's Brad Garlinghouse on CNBC on the afternoon of December 22nd, 2020. That morning, the United States government sued his company. Page one of the lawsuit says Ripple sold 14.6 6 billion XRP worth $1.38 billion as a security it never registered. If you were holding XRP that night, you were holding a coin the government had just called illegal to sell. Nearly 6 years later, on October 26th, 2026, that same government's bank regulator signed a letter making Ripple a federal bank.

Same company, same coin on the same ledger. And the letter does something almost nobody who bought XRP on the Ripple is a bank now headline has read. If you hold XRP because you were told the day the banks let Ripple in is the day your coin finally gets paid, that day has a date now. It was October 26, 2026. So the question this whole video answers is simple.

What did Ripple get in that letter? And what did your coin get? Because those are two different answers. And the second one is the one that costs you money if you guess. So if you're feeling bullish, like this video and smash that subscribe button.

We're on our way to 400,000 subscribers. And if you're going to be the first millionaire in your family tree, confirm that by commenting amen down below. Also, we are giving away our 2026 altcoin trading strategies and crypto yield generation briefing to everyone who follows us on Instagram @bullrunners. The official link is in the description down below this video. Let's run it.

All right, bull runners. Ryan Huggin here, aka WinW with Ryan. Welcome back to the channel. So, go back to that week in December of 2020.

Breaking news. Coinbase just announced they will be delisting XRP from their platform and they will suspend all trading starting next month. 6 days after the suit, Coinbase said it would stop trading XRP. Bitstamp had already stopped. OKCoin stopped that same day.

This comes after the huge fall from 60 cents, 60 plus cents down to 25 cents. So basically all the gains from the last few weeks going up all the way up to about uh 80 cents and then falling to about 60 cents, you know, hovering there and then basically all that has been wiped out all due to this lawsuit from the SEC. On December 29th, 2020, 12 hours after Coinbase's announcement, XRP traded at 19.9, down 31% in 1 day. A month earlier, it had been over 60. Think about what that is in a real account. $10,000 of XRP on Thanksgiving was about $3,300.

By New Year's Eve, the biggest store in America had taken it off the shelf. The very first thing I started doing was scrambling for other exchanges that were international that you could either buy or sell XRP at because there had to be something available to us. But here's what the headlines missed that week. Ripple didn't want out of the system. Ripple wanted in.

But listen to what Garlinghouse was angry about on day one.

The SEC is really picking winners. They're saying there's a duopoly of Bitcoin and Ether are the two digital assets, the cryptocurrencies that will be not regulated by the SEC here in the United States. And it really, I think, sends an ominous sign for innovation around cryptocurrency in the United States. Picking winners in general has not been something the US government should be in the business of doing.

Picking winners. His complaint wasn't that the government had rules. It was that the government had put Bitcoin and Ether inside the rules and left XRP outside. So, Ripple spent the next 2 and 1/2 years in court trying to get inside.

Also happening this morning, a district court judge in New York just delivered a huge win for Ripple and its case against the SEC. In the ruling, the judge said the XRP token is quote, "not necessarily a security on its face. That decision was seen as a key hurdle for the crypto industry amid huge scrutiny in 2023."

On July 13th of 2023, Judge Anna Lisa Torres ruled that XRP sold to regular people on exchanges was not a security. XRP went from about 47 cents to about 82 cents that afternoon. This was kind of a landmark ruling and and one that uh let uh crypto enthusiasts and advocates really puff out their chest, I think, for the first time in in several months and and perhaps years. Um all this stems back to a a landmark suit that the SEC issued against a company called Ripple Labs based in San Francisco.

That's the day most people remember as the win. But the case wasn't over. The government appealed. Ripple appealed back. And the judge had also ruled that Ripple's direct sales to big investors did break the law.

So the company that wanted to be inside the system still had to pay a bill. On August 7th, 2025, both sides dropped their appeals. The penalty stayed $125,35,150. The SEC's own release says the judgment stays in effect. That's the end of the lawsuit.

4 years, 7 months, and 16 days. But look at what Ripple did 5 weeks before that while the case was still open. On July 2nd, 2025, Garlinghouse announced Ripple was applying to the OC, the agency that charters national banks for a bank charter. Its subsidiary had also asked the Federal Reserve for an account.

Founded Standard Custody, which um is qualified custodian in New York. Ripple ultimately acquired Standard Custody about a year ago to become the issuer of RLUSD. That subsidiary is Standard Custody. It's a New York trust company. It's the company that issues RLUSD, Ripple's dollar coin, and it already answers to New York's banking regulator.

So, the plan was never be a crypto company the banks tolerate. The plan was be regulated twice, once by New York, once by Washington. Which regulator actually stands behind the things that you hold and whether it's the state, the feds, or nobody is the first thing that we check with our clients inside of the SGS system at Altcoin Pro. And in the link below, you can book yourself a free call to check that out. And in July of 2025, the Genius Act became law.

For the first time, Congress wrote down the rules for a dollar coin or stable coin. Ripple's application was already in. On December 12th, 2025, the OC said yes conditionally. Garlinghouse called it a massive step forward. Here's how it landed on your feed the next morning.

Ripple just got conditional approval from the OC to charter a national trust bank in the United States. This is not the average partnership headline in the crypto space. This is Ripple walking straight into the federal banking system through the front door. Through the front door, Ripple is a bank. Headlines ran with Ripple is now a bank.

That's not what conditional approval means. A conditional approval from the OC is permission to proceed toward becoming a bank, not confirmation that the bank is actually open and operating yet. But it wasn't not yet. A conditional approval is a permission slip to go build the bank. The OC's own letter spell this out.

Here's the sentence from an OC charter letter dated September 18th, 2026. Same kind of charter, different applicant. Final approval and authorization pursuant to 12 USC27A for the bank to commerce business will not be granted until a pre-opening requirements are met. So between December and October, Ripple had to build the thing. The money set aside, the people, the controls, and let the OC inspect all of it.

One explainer channel put the window at 18 months or about June 2027. You're probably thinking, I've been told the big moment is here for 6 years. December was the big moment, then it wasn't. And that's fair. So, here's the one thing that I check before I believe any Ripple is a bank headline.

Which word is in the letter conditional or final? That's the whole test. And in Garlinghouse's own words in February 2026, here's why Ripple wanted the second regulator at all. We do have a conditional OCC charter which is uh really for almost belt and suspenders regulatory oversight for our stable coin business. But we went kind of the extra step of having regulatory oversight both to the New York Department of Financial Services uh as a trust license.

Then we also went and uh applied for an OC charter which we now have conditional approval on. We think that uniquely positions us as you know almost overregulated. Uh, but we want that

belts and suspenders almost overregulated on purpose. Then on October 26th, 2026 at 4:22 in the afternoon, the day before swell, Garlinghouse posted the OC had granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank. Final. The word changed, but the word is not the job. So, keep reading.

Now, read what the bank is approved to do. This is Ripple's own release the same day. R&TB's approved activities include managing the segregated reserve supporting Ripple's RLUSD, acting as collateral trustee or the reserves for the benefit of RLUSD holders and providing fiduciary digital asset custody services, RNTB, Ripple National Trust Bank. So there's three jobs in plain words. One, hold the cash and treasury bills that sit behind RLUSD in a separate pile.

Two, be the trustee of that pile, which means the pile belongs to the people holding RLUSD, not to Ripple if Ripple ever goes under. Three, see where it says custody? That just means holding coins for somebody else. Hold crypto for businesses under the rules that govern a bank trust department. That's it.

That's a vault with a federal inspector. But look at what's missing. Here's what a national trust bank can't do. It can't take your deposit. It can't make a loan.

Reporting on the approval says exactly that. No deposits, no loans. The OC's charter letters say a trust bank will limit its operation to those of a trust company. This kind of bank is not small. By the way, the OCC's own letter says that as of March 31st, 2026, the trust banks it supervises held 7.2 2 trillion for other people.

Vaults, not lenders. So, Ripple got a new vault. Now, what did your coin get? Count the names in that approved activity sentence. RLUSD twice, holding coins for others once, XRP zero.

Count them in Garlinghouse's post. RLUSD once, holding coins once, XRP zero. That's not a trick, it's what the bank is for. On October 26, 2026, there was about $2.58 billion of RLUSD out there. The bank's first job is to guard the cash behind that $2.58 billion.

On the same day, there were about 63.35 billion XRP at about $130 each. The bank's letter doesn't say a word about any of them. You're probably thinking, "But a Ripple bank holding crypto for businesses has to be good for XRP." Maybe. But here's the honest version. The coin holding job is for companies, not for you and me.

Whether the first thing a big customer asks that vault to hold is XRP or Bitcoin or a treasury fund turned into a coin is the customer's call. Nothing in that letter puts XRP in the vault. What the letter does do is answer the 2020 question for the company. In 2020, the government said Ripple was running an illegal security sale. In 2026, the government's bank regulator says Ripple is fit to guard other people's money under federal inspection.

And the coins half of that question got answered separately. On March 17th, 2026, the SEC and the CFTC put out an interpretation that lists XRP as one of 16 digital commodities. That's the paper that moved your coin from security to commodity, not this one. Now, this is all very exciting for Ripple the company and RLUSD and hopefully XRP by relation, but unfortunately there's nothing in there to help regulate XRP to the upside. But that is why we are also waiting for the next move of the Clarity Act.

So, pay attention and subscribe if you're not because we do cover that as well. And one more thing about where your coins sit. If they're on an exchange, that exchange's own filings describe you as a creditor if it fails. A federally supervised trust bank holding coins as a trustee is a different legal animal. That's the real long-term story in this letter.

And it's a story about who holds your coins, not about price. Ripple wasn't alone in that December batch. On December 12th, 2025, the OC conditionally approved Circle, Paxos, and BitGo on the same day. The crypto companies are all walking in the same door, and the old banks don't love it. US controller Jonathan Gould.

Today's final rule advances to the president of United States and Secretary Scott Besson's vision for American leadership in digital assets. We are providing a clear practical framework for payment stable coin innovation with strong standards for reserve banking redemption and risk management. That's the comp troller Jonathan Gould 4 days before Ripple's letter laying out the stable coin rules that banks had been fighting. Garlingous's December release called the other side anti-inovation bank lobbyists. Now the clock swell Ripple's own conference runs October 27 through the 29th of 2026 in New York and Garlinghouse timed that post for the night before.

We're actually saying well we want to be the bridge between traditional finance and the decentralized finance world. So we're going to we're the decentralized finance piece. We're going to acquire things that are traditional finance.

The bridge between the old banks and crypto. That's the pitch that he'll make on stage. Here's what I would listen for. One, an opening date for the bank because final approval is still not open for business. Two, whether the word XRP ever shows up in the coin holding business from a customer's mouth, not Ripples.

Now, listen to him again. December 22nd, 2020, the day they sued.

XRP is a separate thing altogether. It is a currency that trades in the marketplace.

XRP is a separate thing altogether. Six years later, the government agreed with him on both halves. Ripple is a bank, a real one with a federal inspector that can hold cash and hold coins and can't lend a dollar. And XRP is a separate thing altogether, a commodity on paper since March 17th, 2026 that trades in the same marketplace, which is exactly where it was. What the letter doesn't settle when the bank opens and whether anyone ever asked it to hold XRP.

Ripple got into the building. Your coin is still outside and nothing in this letter walks it in. So tell me in the comments section December 22nd, 2020, one word, holding, buying, or out. Everything in this video came out of three documents. A 71page lawsuit from 2020, a one-page bank letter from 2026, and the release that explains it.

Nobody read them to you in a thumbnail. Reading the page the headline is built on, and then checking where your own coins actually sit is the job. And it's what SGS system inside of Altcoin Pro does with people line by line on what they already own. If you're holding $50,000 or more and nobody has ever sat down with you and mapped out who's actually holding it, that's who it's for. If you're not there yet, keep watching these videos.

These are free and I'm not going to stop making them. If this is money that you and your spouse decide on together, bring them onto the call as well. Bring a pen and paper. You're going to get a ton of notes to take as well. the first link in the description. Just click the more button and it'll show you the link right there at the top.

Book the call immediately. Crypto carries risk and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. This video is education, not financial advice. You know what to do. Stay bullish.

I'll see you at the top.