As blockchain adoption grows, one question keeps coming up. What role will $XRP play if banks, stablecoins and tokenized assets all move on-chain?

According to Jazzi Cooper, Head of Product at RippleX, $XRP’s biggest opportunity is still the one Ripple has talked about for years, becoming the bridge asset that connects different digital currencies.

Why $XRP Could Become More Important

Cooper said the need for a bridge asset will increase as more stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and tokenized assets are launched.

Today, if every asset needed its own direct trading pair with every other asset, the number of liquidity pools would grow rapidly, making the system expensive and difficult to manage.

Instead, $XRP can act as a common bridge between assets.

RippleX Says $XRP Is 15 Times More Capital Efficient

To test the idea, Cooper said her team recently built a model comparing two different systems. If liquidity were created directly between 50 different assets, the market would require 1,225 trading pairs. Using $XRP as the bridge reduces that to just 50 pairs.

According to RippleX’s analysis, that makes the system 15 times more capital efficient than creating direct liquidity between every stablecoin or token. Cooper said the findings provide measurable evidence that a bridge asset becomes increasingly valuable as more assets come on-chain.

IMF Has Raised Similar Questions

Cooper also pointed to previous discussions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) around tokenization and digital currencies. She said the IMF has highlighted that if every country eventually issues its own digital currency, creating direct trading pairs between every currency would not scale efficiently.

Using a bridge asset could simplify those transactions by allowing every asset to connect through a single intermediary.

$XRP’s Role Could Expand Beyond Payments

Beyond cross-border transfers, Cooper believes $XRP could become more useful in institutional finance. She said RippleX is working on bringing lending protocols to the $XRP Ledger, allowing $XRP holders to lend their assets and potentially earn yield instead of simply holding them.

Cooper also expects $XRP to play a growing role as collateral in financial markets, particularly as institutions adopt products such as Ripple Prime and expand blockchain-based financial services.

Looking further ahead, she said $XRP could eventually be used more widely across the $XRP Ledger ecosystem to support protocol incentives and other network functions as more financial applications are built.

While that vision is still evolving, Cooper says $XRP’s role could grow far beyond payments as blockchain adoption accelerates.