Ex-CFTC Chief Pham Visits Ripple as XRP Is Coming to Nasdaq: Morning Crypto Report

TL;DR

• Caroline Pham, CEO of MoonPay Institutional and former acting CFTC Chair, posted a selfie at Ripple’s office, fueling payment and RWA tokenization partnership rumors.
• XRP treasury firm Evernorth Holdings will debut on Nasdaq under ticker XRPN on October 8, following shareholder approval of the Armada Acquisition Corp. II merger.
• XRP consolidates near $1.50, while Bitcoin drops to $85,600, triggering an $89.9 million net outflow day across U.S. spot BTC ETFs.
• Traders shift focus toward the upcoming Federal Reserve interest rate decision on October 28 and the U.S. midterm elections on November 3.

On Tuesday morning, the cryptocurrency market went on the defensive after Bitcoin, for the third time since late September, bounced off resistance at 87,200–87,400 and slid to $85,600. Digital assets completely ignored the Nasdaq’s all-time high. Instead of rallying alongside stocks, the crypto market saw net daily outflows from spot ETFs.

Macroeconomic pressures weighed on the charts. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries held at a multi-year high of 5.3%. Against this backdrop, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio is already forecasting a severe crisis in the U.S. government debt market due to falling demand from China and Japan.

On-chain data also points to institutional pessimism: Bitcoin’s net annual capital inflow, measured by the change in realized capitalization, fell to -$40 billion in 2026.

While large investors wait on the sidelines, the day’s main story is taking shape in the XRP ecosystem. Caroline Pham, current CEO of MoonPay Institutional and former head of the CFTC, fueled interest in Ripple by posting a selfie in front of the company’s headquarters. The intrigue coincided with XRP’s move onto U.S. exchange infrastructure. Shareholders of Armada Acquisition Corp. II approved its merger with Evernorth Holdings.

The deal clears the way for Evernorth shares to list on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN on October 8. It is a counterpart to MicroStrategy, but for XRP: the first public company to bring hundreds of millions of tokens directly onto its balance sheet. Wall Street is getting a regulated investment vehicle holding 473 million XRP and $300 million in cash, while CFTC officials now officially classify XRP as a digital commodity alongside BTC and ETH.

XRP is heading to Nasdaq. Why, if there is an ETF?

A newly filed Form 8-K from Armada with the SEC sets out the terms of the upcoming listing. The exercise price for warrants trading under the tickers XRPNU and XRPNW is set at $11.50 per share. Ripple, Pantera Capital, Kraken, SBI Group, GSR and Arrington Capital are among the investors in Evernorth, which holds 347 million XRP on its balance sheet.

A total of 20.5 million shares voted in favor of the merger, compared with just 1.4 million votes against. This shows that the backers are fully prepared to deploy the vehicle as a regulated treasury instrument in the U.S. stock market.

At the same time, Grayscale Investments is restructuring the Grayscale XRP Trust (GXRP). The fund has added Anchorage Digital Bank as an additional custodian to diversify risk, while Coinbase remains its primary custodian.

The main new feature is the launch of in-kind share creation and redemption. Authorized participants, including Macquarie and Virtu, can now transfer actual XRP to the fund instead of cash.

This addresses a chronic problem with trusts: the share price can finally align with net asset value (NAV), while institutional liquidity increases.

XRP itself is stuck in a narrow range around $1.50, testing the lower edge of local resistance. The former ceiling at $1.54–$1.56 and September’s high of $1.65 remain in place.

Ripple President Monica Long has also documented rapid growth in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization on the XRP Ledger. On-chain volumes there have grown from $100 million to $2.5 billion.

On the technical side, the Permission Delegation and Batch upgrades, which enable batched transaction execution, are expected to go live on XRPL this week, by October 9. The LendingProtocolV1_1 credit module remains in the voting phase.

The dollar is too expensive. What is keeping the crypto market from rising right now?

Friday’s U.S. Labor Department (BLS) report confirmed that the economy is cooling, showing a gain of just 29,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.2%. This reduced the probability of an October Fed rate hike to 17–22%.

Even so, capital shifted to a defensive strategy, keeping the crypto market’s total capitalization in the $2.93–$3.02 trillion range. Large funds started the week by taking profits.

According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot crypto ETFs ended October 5 with the following results:

• Bitcoin funds (BTC): Net daily outflows totaled $89.90 million. BlackRock’s IBIT was the only product to record inflows, with $69.90 million. Total AUM stood at $57.73 billion.
• Ethereum funds (ETH): The funds ended the day down $50.76 million, pressured by outflows from Grayscale’s ETHE, which lost $73.66 million.
• Solana funds (SOL): The funds recorded moderate daily outflows of $2.34 million, while SOL itself held around $120–$121.

As speculative capital pulls back, the global tokenized asset sector has surpassed $38.80 billion in distributed value, according to rwa.xyz, with U.S. Treasuries clearly dominating the category at $14.87 billion.

Against this backdrop, the Solana Foundation, with technical support from JPMorgan, has deployed Solana DvP infrastructure. The system provides financial institutions with instant “delivery versus payment” settlement, eliminating the two-day settlement lag in the traditional securities system.

For Ethereum, the day’s main event was Vitalik Buterin’s appearance at the OKX NOW 2026 conference in Singapore. Buterin said that within two years, ZK technology will make Ethereum transactions cost pennies. AI agents, he added, will become the main user interface, and familiar apps may begin to disappear as direct blockchain interactions between bots take their place.

The network’s founder also warned that AI poses a serious security threat because it can quickly learn to find hidden vulnerabilities in smart contracts.

Among the positive on-chain developments of the day, NEAR rose to $5.17–$5.29, with a market capitalization of $6.8 billion. The move followed an official report that the hacker had fully returned the stolen $3.8 million through the NEAR Intents protocol before the official deadline.

CoinGlass liquidation data shows a local shakeout of buyers: $176.31 million in positions were forcibly closed over 24 hours, including $110.70 million in long positions.

Crypto market outlook: What to watch through the end of the week (and why you shouldn’t try to catch the bottom)

Market sentiment is gradually cooling, with the Fear & Greed Index falling from 72 on Friday to 67. Prominent trader Peter Brandt has identified a strong bullish pattern on Bitcoin’s chart, but warned that large blocks of historical supply overhead will sharply limit the pace of any gains. A rapid breakout is unlikely.

Grayscale Investments analysts also pointed to hidden timing risks in their macro research. Bitcoin’s historical three-year return is an impressive 225%, compared with 109% for the Nasdaq, but that result was driven by just a handful of days. If an investor misses Bitcoin’s five best trading days, the return falls to 95%. Missing the 15 best sessions puts the portfolio at a net loss of 11%.

For this reason, holding a position consistently makes far more sense than trying to catch the perfect bottom.

Through the end of the week, traders are focused on four key triggers:

1. Bitcoin’s technical level: Will bulls hold local support around $84,400–$85,000, or will the market enter a deeper correction without closing above the $87,200–$87,400 ceiling?
2. Decoupling from stocks: Can the crypto market overcome its internal liquidity shortage and follow the Nasdaq as it sets new records?
3. Nasdaq’s XRP factor: The official closing of the Evernorth deal on October 7, followed by the start of trading in XRPN shares on Nasdaq on October 8. Wall Street’s response to the stock will show whether large funds are ready to buy regulated XRP exposure.
4. The political calendar: The next Fed meeting is scheduled for October 28, while the U.S. midterm elections on November 3 have historically served as a trigger for a market reversal into a prolonged downtrend.