XRP Records Abnormal ETF Imbalance as Select US Funds Outperform Token Surge by 100%

A sharp price gap has emerged in the U.S. stock market: spot XRP ETFs are rising twice as fast as the token itself. While the token is posting an intraday gain of 7%–8%, shares of some regulated funds are surging by 16%–17%.

CryptoQuant analyst “Xaif_Crypto” was the first to draw attention to the anomaly. According to his post, all seven spot XRP ETFs in the U.S. entered the green during the trading session, recording an interim trading volume of $19.7 million.

On spot exchanges, XRP was trading around $1.44 at the time, up 7.04% over the past 24 hours, confirming a breakout from its local descending channel and a rebound from the August low of $1.00. 

However, the performance of instruments listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq diverged. Major funds from Bitwise (XRP: +8.47%) and Franklin Templeton (XRPZ: +8.36%) are moving in line with the spot market. At the same time, products with lower net assets have broken sharply away from it: Grayscale shares (XXRP) are up 17.10%, XRPT has gained 16.78%, and UXRP has risen 17.01%.

This divergence, which created an unusual imbalance, is likely linked to a local supply-and-demand distortion in U.S. exchange order books. The sharp move in the underlying asset may have triggered a short-term shortage of sellers in less liquid funds.

As a result, market orders began pushing ETF share prices higher, creating a substantial premium to the net asset value of their underlying holdings (NAV) and allowing the funds to outperform the token’s daily advance by around 100%.

Paradox of the day: funds rise while investors withdraw money

While order books move into premium territory, data from SoSoValue reveals the other side of the picture: this surge in prices is taking place without any inflow of new capital. The sector even closed the previous session in negative territory, recording net outflows of $7.20 million. The entire amount came from profit-taking by large investors and was concentrated in a single fund, Bitwise. All other issuers recorded zero flows.

In other words, this is not an influx of fresh capital but an aggressive internal repricing of ETF shares against a total daily trading volume of $27.22 million.

U.S. XRP ETFs currently hold $1.42 billion, equivalent to 1.67% of the token’s total market capitalization, while cumulative net inflows since their launch have exceeded $1.68 billion.

Against the backdrop of the developing spot-market trend, U.S. exchanges have effectively seized the initiative. A situation in which a derivative financial product begins driving short-term price action faster than the underlying asset itself could become a new reality for the market.