XRP vs XLM: What Stellar's DTCC Deal Means for Each Coin
The DTCC chose Stellar for tokenization, yet a Bullrunners video says XRP has beaten XLM since 2014. A look at who buys each coin and how much new supply arrives.
Key takeaways
- A big partnership for a network is not the same as buying pressure on its coin. Ask who is actually buying the token.
- The DTCC chose Stellar as the first network for its tokenization plan, but the service is not live yet and targets the first half of 2027.
- According to the video, XRP has direct buyers through US spot ETFs (about $1.8 billion in inflows) and Evernorth's XRPN. XLM has no single-coin spot ETF in the US.
- New supply matters. The video puts XRP's yearly supply growth at a little over 5% and XLM's at about 9%, and says the Stellar Development Foundation released about 1.1 billion XLM in just over three months.
- The video says swapping XRP for XLM at the top of the 38% jump would have meant a loss of about 17%, versus about 5% for XRP. Headline rallies can reverse.
The DTCC, the company behind almost every US stock trade, has chosen Stellar as the first blockchain for its plan to tokenize stocks and funds. Yet according to a Bullrunners video, XRP has still outperformed XLM since 2014. The video’s reason: what moves a coin is who buys it and how much new supply arrives.
That distinction matters if you hold either coin. The video says XLM jumped 38% in two days after the DTCC announcement while XRP slipped, and many XRP holders started to wonder whether they held the wrong coin. Outside reports of that move vary widely, so treat 38% as the video’s figure. The video argues that the headline and the coin are two different things, and it backs this up with its own numbers on buyers, fees and supply.
What did the DTCC announce with Stellar?
The DTCC announced plans to tokenize stocks and funds on Stellar’s blockchain, so they could be sent like crypto even when the stock market is closed. Tokenization means turning a traditional asset into a token on a blockchain. The video notes that the XRP Ledger did not get a mention.
Stellar is the first network in the plan, not necessarily the only one. The DTCC describes the project as part of a multi-chain strategy and plans to connect other blockchain networks over time.
Nadine Chakar, the DTCC’s global head of digital assets, said Stellar’s “proven track record with institutional assets on chain is an important factor in our evaluation of blockchain networks.” The video’s plain-English reading is that big firms already have real money sitting on Stellar.
The catch is timing. In an interview shown in the video, Denelle Dixon, who runs the Stellar Development Foundation, said the DTCC is launching its own test network in July. She said the DTCC has told Stellar it plans to go live in “the first half of next year,” which means 2027, with no specific date. As the video points out, anyone who bought XLM on the headline bought into something that is still months away from starting.
Stellar had more good news after that. At the end of October, MetaMask, one of the most popular crypto wallets, made Stellar a default network. The video says this means millions of people can now hold XLM in a wallet they already use.
Does Stellar really have more tokenized assets than the XRP Ledger?
Yes, if you count only assets that can actually move. According to the video, Stellar holds about $3.9 billion in transferable funds and assets, against about $640 million on the XRP Ledger. That is roughly six times more. One example is Spiko, a firm that puts investment funds on blockchains. Its biggest fund is about $2.4 billion, and most of Spiko’s money sits on Stellar.
Some headlines put the XRP Ledger at around $5 billion in tokenized assets, which would put it ahead. The video explains that about 90% of that figure is what trackers call represented assets. For these, the ledger keeps a record of something held elsewhere, a bit like a receipt. You cannot trade a represented asset or send it to anyone.
Why has XRP still beaten XLM since 2014?
According to the video, XRP has done better over the long run because more buyers purchase the coin itself. Here are the video’s figures:
| Measure | XRP | XLM |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000 invested in September 2014, value at recording | About $249,000 | About $83,000 |
| Change since January 2026 | Down about 32% | Down about 16% |
| Drop from record high | Down about 66% | Down about 81% (record from January 2018) |
The long-run gap stands out because of who made the comparison. Jed McCaleb helped build XRP and then co-founded Stellar, which was first built on XRP’s code. On a podcast, he said Stellar “worked much better.” By the video’s figures, the coin he walked away from has done about three times better since 2014.
How much of a big deal reaches the coin’s price?
Very little, on either network, according to the video. When money moves through a tokenized fund on Stellar, the network records who owns which share. Each transfer pays a fee in XLM of less than a thousandth of a cent. Every account must also keep at least 1 XLM as a minimum balance, which the video puts at about 17 cents. So billions of dollars can move on Stellar while very little XLM gets bought.
The video stresses that XRP has the same problem. At Swell, Ripple’s conference in New York, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Ripple will prioritize XRP “any place it makes sense.” He added that he would rather see XRP used in a small percentage of a customer’s transactions than none, and that using fiat or Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin still gets Ripple “some of the pie.” Ripple gets its slice either way, but XRP holders only benefit when XRP is the asset being used. That is the same gap covered in why XRP holders aren’t paid by Ripple’s wins.
Fees on the XRP Ledger tell a similar story. Every transaction on the ledger destroys a small network fee, so more use means slightly fewer XRP. How the XRP fee burn works explains the mechanics. The video says users paid about $1.2 million in fees across the whole ledger in the first half of 2026. It says most of that went to other users on the ledger, and only about 10% was the kind of network fee that gets burned. Measured against what the video calls a market cap of about $79 billion, that is next to nothing.
Who is actually buying XRP and XLM?
According to the video, XRP has direct buyers for the coin itself, while XLM has far fewer.
- XRP: The video says US spot XRP ETFs, which hold the real coin, have taken in about $1.8 billion since launch. When money flows into those funds, they must hold more XRP. Evernorth, a company built to hold XRP, started trading on the Nasdaq as XRPN in October and holds about 473 million XRP.
- XLM: There is no single-coin spot XLM ETF in the US. The video says the Stellar ETF it refers to uses futures, so it never has to buy the actual coin, and holds less than $2 million. That needs context. Some US index ETFs that hold a basket of coins include spot XLM. Grayscale’s Stellar Lumens Trust, which is a trust rather than an ETF, has been reported to hold about $21 million in XLM. Even so, these amounts are small next to the $1.8 billion the video cites for XRP funds. By the video’s own figures, the XRP funds’ inflows are roughly 900 times the futures fund’s holdings.
The video’s summary is that big money on Stellar uses the network, while big money on XRP buys the coin.
How much new supply is coming for each coin?
Both coins face steady new supply, and the video says XLM’s is growing faster.
For XRP, the video says around 270 million new XRP enter circulation each month, mostly from Ripple’s escrow releases. How to read Ripple’s monthly escrow release covers how those releases work. The video says funds absorbed only about 15% of that new supply in the first half of 2026, which leaves the other 85% to find buyers on the open market.
For XLM, the video compares the situation to Jed McCaleb’s old XRP sales. According to the video, McCaleb sold about 9 billion XRP over eight years under an agreement with Ripple, roughly 1.1 billion a year, until his “taco stand” wallet ran empty in July 2022. More detail is in the full story of Jed McCaleb’s XRP sales.
The Stellar Development Foundation publishes its XLM balance. Per the video, the foundation held about 15.6 billion XLM on July 21 and about 14.5 billion on November 1. That is about 1.1 billion XLM, roughly 3% of all circulating XLM, released in just over three months. That is about what McCaleb used to sell in a full year. The foundation’s own page says its lumens “will eventually be spent or distributed to enhance and promote Stellar.” The video adds that the foundation says this XLM goes to grants and partners that grow the network, but it has not said where this particular batch went.
Over a full year, the video puts XRP’s supply growth at a little over 5% and Stellar’s at about 9%. The video’s own foundation figures don’t quite match that 9%. If 1.1 billion XLM went out every three and a half months, that would be roughly 12% a year, so treat both growth rates as rough estimates. The video also notes that the foundation still holds more than 14 billion XLM. Unlike McCaleb’s wallet, there is no balance about to run dry.
What happened to holders who swapped after the headline?
According to the video, a swap from XRP to XLM after the jump would have lost more than holding XRP over the same period. The video says anyone who swapped at the top of the 38% move, which it places in May, would be down about 17% since, while XRP is down about 5%. The video does not say exactly which price it treats as the top, and the result depends heavily on that starting point. Its broader point is that buying after a headline has already moved the price carries its own risk.
Three questions to ask when another coin wins a big deal
The video’s closing advice is short. Whichever coin you hold, look past the deal and ask who is actually buying the coin, and check this on chain. Bullrunners has turned the article’s main points into three questions:
- Does the deal require buying the coin? Check whether the partner only pays network fees, or actually holds or spends the token. Tiny fees and small account minimums mean little buying.
- Who is buying the coin itself? Look for spot ETFs, treasury companies or other holders that must buy the real token, and check whether money is flowing in.
- How much new supply is arriving? Compare monthly releases from escrow, foundations or insiders against that buying. Published wallet balances can be checked on chain.
None of these questions tells you whether to hold or sell a coin. They help separate news about a network from demand for its token.
What to watch next
Watch whether the DTCC’s Stellar service goes live in the first half of 2027 as targeted, and which other networks the DTCC connects. Watch whether a single-coin spot XLM ETF launches in the US. Track the Stellar Development Foundation’s published balance for further drops. For XRP, compare monthly escrow releases against ETF and Evernorth buying. Those numbers say more about each coin than the next partnership announcement.
Frequently asked questions
Did the DTCC choose Stellar over the XRP Ledger?
The DTCC announced plans to tokenize stocks and funds on Stellar, and the video notes that the XRP Ledger was not mentioned. The DTCC describes the project as a multi-chain strategy with Stellar as the first network. The service is not live yet and targets the first half of 2027.
Has XRP or XLM performed better since 2014?
The video says $1,000 put into XRP in September 2014 would be worth about $249,000 at the time of recording, versus about $83,000 for XLM. It also says that since January 2026, XRP is down about 32% and XLM about 16%.
Is there a spot XLM ETF in the US?
There is no single-coin spot XLM ETF in the US. The video says the Stellar ETF it refers to uses futures and holds under $2 million. Some US index ETFs do hold spot XLM, as does Grayscale's Stellar Lumens Trust, which is a trust rather than an ETF.
How fast is new XLM entering circulation?
The video reports that the Stellar Development Foundation's published balance fell from about 15.6 billion XLM on July 21 to about 14.5 billion on November 1. That is about 1.1 billion XLM, roughly 3% of circulating supply. The video puts XLM's yearly supply growth at about 9%.
Does Stellar's tokenized asset lead over the XRP Ledger hold up?
Per the video, Stellar holds about $3.9 billion in transferable tokenized assets versus about $640 million on the XRP Ledger. Headlines putting the XRP Ledger near $5 billion count 'represented' assets, which make up about 90% of that figure and cannot be moved or traded.
Full video transcript
From the video's captions, lightly formatted. Captions can mishear names and numbers, so check figures against the article above.
If you hold XRP, this one is hard to watch. Stellar keeps winning the deals that XRP holders have waited years for. The company behind almost every stock trade in America picked it to put stocks and funds on a blockchain, and the XRP ledger didn't even get a mention. And Stellar was co-founded by one of the people who built XRP. He went on to sell every XRP that he had.
And right after that Stellar deal was announced, the two coins went in opposite directions. XLM jumped 38% in two days. XRP slipped. So if you're holding XLM, it probably feels like you picked the winner. And if you're in XRP, you might be wondering if you're holding the wrong coin.
But a big deal for Stellar doesn't automatically mean more people are buying XLM. What moves a coin is who's buying it and how many new coins keep coming out. And one of these two coins has billions of new coins heading for the market right now. So if you hold either one, you'll want to know which. So XRP or XLM?
Which one should you really be holding right now? That's what we set out to answer in this video. Let's run it. All right, bull runners, welcome back to the channel. So let's start with that deal.
The company behind it is the DTCC. And if you ever bought a stock in America, it almost certainly went through them. They're building a way to put stocks and funds on a blockchain so you could send them like crypto even when the stock market is closed on the weekends. That's called tokenization. And this announcement was all about doing it on Stellar.
So why Stellar? Well, the DTCC's head of digital assets gave the reason. Stellar's proven track record with institutional assets on chain is an important factor. So in plain words, big firms already have real money sitting on Stellar. So for XLM holders, what does any of this actually start?
Well, the person who know is Danielle Dixon. She runs the foundation behind Stellar. And in an interview, someone asked her exactly that. Here's what she told them.
So there So the DTCC is launching its own test net in July. And for us, it's one of those things where there's different You know, when you work at a large institution, you have to be able to meet a lot of their internal but also the integration pieces. And so they have told us that it's the first half of next year. We don't have a specific date on that for them, but I suspect given how much attention that they put to this and how important that this is to them, that they actually are are moving to an open public network that it'll be that they'll have those dates in the near term. But it is really exciting to us.
I mean, when I think about the fact that we're moving this large institution and integrating it into a platform that is open and public and available to everyone all over the world, it's a pretty remarkable thing.
So it isn't live yet, and the target is the first half of 2027. So if you bought XLM on that headline, you bought into something that's still months away from starting. And while XLM holders wait, Dickson's Foundation has been doing something with its own XLM that matters to every one of them. So we'll get to that in a little bit. But first, here's how XRP holders took the news.
Just getting DTCC on board was already a big win for Stellar, and a lot of XRP holders were shaken by it. Even people who usually stick up for XRP could see it. Here's how one of them put it. People are so thrown off by the DTCC and Stellar announcement that they're missing the bigger picture on XRP. And for XLM, the good news keeps coming.
At the end of October, MetaMask, one of the most popular crypto wallets in the world, made Stellar a default network. So millions of people can now hold XLM in a wallet they already use. Now one firm shows how much is already there, and it's called Spiko. It puts investment funds on blockchains. Its biggest fund alone is worth about $2.4 billion, and most of Spiko's money sits on Stellar.
So how far ahead does that put Stellar? Well, if you add up every fund and asset on each network, the kind you can actually send to someone, it's not close. Stellar has about $3.9 billion, and the XRP Ledger has about $640 million. So Stellar has about six times more. Now you might have seen headlines putting the XRP Ledger at around $5 billion in tokenized assets, which would put it ahead of Stellar.
So which number is correct here? Well, about 90% of that $5 billion can't actually move. Trackers call it represented, which means the Ledger just keeps a record of something that's held somewhere else, a bit like a receipt. You can't trade it or send it to anyone. So, when you only count what can be really used, Stellar is well ahead of XRP.
In this year, XRP has fallen about twice as hard as XLM. Since January, XRP is down 32% and XLM is down 16%. Honestly, this is the part that's hard to take for XRP holders. XRP holders spent years waiting for the big players in finance to come on board. And when they finally show up, they went to Stellar.
So, by now, XLM looks like the one to hold. And Jed McCaleb seems to think so, too. He's the one that I mentioned at the start of this video who helped build XRP and then co-founded Stellar. So, he knows both of them from the inside out. Stellar was even first built on XRP's code.
Then years later on a podcast, someone asked him to explain what Stellar is and he compared it with Ripple. He even picked which one worked better.
So so Stellar is the thing that I started after Ripple. So so it's uh yeah, it's it's kind of a another cryptocurrency that, you know, I think worked much better.
But if you bet on Stellar back in 2014, you would have done a lot worse because here's what that looks like in real money. If you put $1,000 into XRP in September of 2014, it would be worth around $249,000 at the time I'm recording this video. The same $1,000 in XLM would be worth around $83,000. So, XRP, the coin he walked away from, has done about three times better than XLM. And even from their record highs, XRP is held up better, too.
XRP is down 66% from its record, but XLM is actually down 81% from a record set back in January of 2018. Now, Stellar has been landing big partners for years and XLM is still way behind XRP on the price chart. But how does that happen? Well, it comes down to where the money in a deal like the DTCC actually goes. Think about a fund like Spykos.
You put dollars in and Stellar keeps track of who owns which share and moves them when someone buys or sells. So, if you've been holding XLM, how much of that money actually reaches the price of the coin? Every transfer pays a network fee in XLM, and it's less than a thousandth of a cent, and every account has to keep one XLM in it, which is about 17 cents. So billions of dollars can move on Stellar and barely any XLM gets bought to do it. And before XRP holders feel too good about that, XRP has the exact same problem.
You can hear it from Ripple's own CEO Brad Garlinghouse at Swell, which is Ripple's big conference in New York. He got asked to sum up Ripple and XRP in 60 seconds. Listen for where XRP fits in his answer.
XRP is going to fit everywhere. Any place it makes sense, we're going to prioritize XRP because candidly, it's in our own best interest.
Right.
We think XRP is extremely efficient in some use cases, and frankly, probably not other use cases, and that's okay. I'd rather see XRP through a small percentage of a customer's transactions than 0%. So if that means I'm going to use other methods, whether it's fiat or a stable coin, RLUSD, that's great cuz that still means I'm getting some of the pie.
So he's talking about RLUSD there, Ripple's own stable coin. So whether a customer uses XRP dollars or RLUSD, Ripple still gets its slice. Your XRP only wins when XRP is the one being used. And Ripple has made XRP optional. So how much does everyday use of the XRP ledger actually do anything for XRP?
Well, the fees people pay on it give us a pretty clear answer. When you send XRP, a tiny sending fee gets destroyed. So the more people use the ledger, the fewer XRP there are. But in the first half of 2026, people paid about $1.2 million in fees on the whole ledger. Most of that money went to other users on the ledger.
Only about 10% was sending fees, the kind that get destroyed. And for a coin worth about $79 billion in market cap, that's next to nothing. So on both networks, the big deals don't do much for the coin. So why has XRP done so much better than XLM since 2014? Well, it's because of who's buying the coin itself.
In America, you can buy XRP through spot ETFs, funds that hold the real coin. Since they launched, about $1.8 billion dollars into them. When more people buy into those funds, the funds have to hold more XRP. That's money going straight into XRP itself. Now, there's even a whole company built just to hold XRP.
It's called Evernode, and in October, it started trading on the Nasdaq as XRPN. It holds about 473 million XRP. So, what does XLM have? Well, XLM doesn't have a spot ETF in America yet. The Stellar ETF that does exist uses futures, so it never has to buy the actual coin, and it holds less than $2 million worth.
XRP's funds have taken in close to 1,000 times that. So, the big bunny on Stellar is using the network without buying much XLM. On XRP, the big money is actually buying the coin itself through the ETFs. But XRP has a problem of its own. Around 270 million new XRP comes into circulation every month, most from the XRP that Ripple keeps locked up and releases bit by bit from their escrow account.
In the first half of 2026, funds like these soaked up only about 15% of it. The other 85% still has to find a buyer somewhere. And until it does, that's a lot of XRP being sold on the open market every single month. So, XRP has the big buyers, and even they can't soak up all of its new coins being released. And what about XLM's new coins?
If you've held XRP for a while, you already know how much one big seller can hurt the price. For eight years, Jed McCaleb sold his XRP in batches under a deal with Ripple that was meant to keep the price from crashing. XRP holders watched those coins hit the market month after month. So, when his wallet finally ran empty in July of 2022, a lot of them were relieved. That wallet even had a name, the taco stand.
And some holders were openly celebrating. The moment we have all waited for is finally upon us. Jed McCaleb has finally emptied his taco stand. His dumping of XRP is now over after many years. It's party time.
He had about 9 billion XRP to sell spread over eight years. That 's about 1.1 billion a year all out of one wallet. So, we checked whether anything like that is happening on Stellar. Now remember, Daniel Dixon's foundation, the one that I said we'd come back to, well, it still holds billions of XLM, and it publishes its balance. On July 21st, it held about 15.6 billion.
By November 1st, it was down to about 14.5 billion. So a little over 3 months, about 1.1 billion XLM left the foundation and went out into circulation. That's about 3% of all the XLM out there. And it's about as many coins as Michael used to sell in a whole year. And the foundation's own page says where the rest is headed.
All of those lumens will eventually be spent or distributed to enhance and promote Stellar. The foundation says that XLM goes to grants and partners that grow the network. It hasn't said what the batch went into. But if you hold XLM, it doesn't really matter where it went. The more XLM there is, the more buyers it takes just to keep the price where it is.
And over a full year, it adds up. XRP adds a little over 5% more coins a year. Stellar adds about 9%. So the thing XRP holders blamed Michael for, well, all those coins hitting the market is now happening to XLM, and it's happening faster. So at this time, there's no wallet about to run dry.
The foundation still holds more than 14 billion XLM. So XRP or XLM, which one should you be holding? Well, from everything we found, Stellar is the one winning the Wall Street deals. But winning the deals didn't make XLM the better coin to hold necessarily. XRP has buyers for the coin itself, and XLM has more new coins coming.
So if you hold XRP, this year probably didn't feel like XRP was winning. Every headline was about the network, was about Ripple. None of them told you what happened to the coin. And after years of waiting on XRP, when XLM is the one in the news, swapping starts to feel like the smart move. And if you remember that 38% jump in XLM back in May, well, if you swapped your XRP for XLM at the top of that move, you'd be down about 17% since then.
XRP is down about 5%. So chasing the headline after the price has moved on the chart would have left a lot worse off than just sitting still and holding. So, when the next big deal goes to another coin, well, are you going to swap and chase that run? Or do you already know why you're holding XRP and do you already have a plan before something like that happens? That's a hard one to answer all by yourself because every win for another coin lands like bad news for your coin that you're holding that hasn't moved.
And it's tough to think straight when it happens. So, that's usually when people make the swap that they end up regretting where they sell out of a coin that isn't moving and they buy into a coin that's already run and then the coin that's run sells off and the coin that they were holding rallies. I'm sure that's probably happened to you before if you've been in the industry longer than a year. So, the smartest thing that you can possibly do is talk it through with an expert on my team before that happens to you. I've left a link in the description below where you can book a free strategy call.
On that call, they'll go through what you're holding with you. You don't reveal your private keys, you don't reveal your seed phrases, we don't manage your funds. We just simply show you how your XRP could be put to work for you while you wait. So, the next time another coin gets the big news, you won't be second guessing yourself. You'll already know exactly what you're doing with your XRP.
So, that's the first link below. It says put your XRP to work. On mobile, tap the button that says more. It's right there at the top. There's a short video, then a form that takes less than a minute, and then you simply pick a time on the calendar to speak with an expert on my team.
And whichever coin you end up holding, the next big time a big name deal is signed, look past the deal and ask who's actually buying the coin. You can verify that on chain. And if you don't know how to do that, my team will show you exactly how. So, as always, I'll see you on the next video through the link below. I'll see you at the top.
You know what to do. Stay bullish.
Education and commentary only, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Do your own research and speak to a qualified advisor before making investment decisions. Figures and quotes are as reported in the video on November 7, 2026 and may have changed since.
