Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan has argued that XRP’s pull with certain institutional investors, especially financial advisors, rests on two plain considerations: confidence that the asset will still exist years from now, and a set of uses those advisors already recognize.
The comments appear in a video Token Relations posted on September 28, 2026, alongside a note that net assets in US XRP exchange-traded funds had climbed 80 percent through the third quarter to a record $1.77 billion. Hougan said the token “appeals for very simple reasons.”
The first, he explained, is that advisors are confident it is not going away.
Many professionals looking at crypto still ask whether the assets are genuine, whether they will last, and whether they will be around in the future. In his account, XRP’s long operating record and substantial background answer that doubt in a way newer tokens often cannot.
That distinction matters for portfolio construction. An advisor placing client money does not only weigh expected return.
The advisor also has to judge whether the holding is likely to remain a functioning market years later, when the account is reviewed, rebalanced, or passed on.
Hougan framed XRP’s history as the feature that reduces that particular uncertainty.
Belief that an asset will persist is not the same claim as a forecast that its price will rise, and his remarks did not treat price appreciation as the reason advisors are buying.
The second reason is practical familiarity. Hougan said XRP fits real-world applications advisors can already explain.
They follow stablecoins.
They follow cross-currency transfers and the liquidity required to complete those transfers.
They also follow industry news and can assess what developments in that space might mean for the broader XRP community.
Those are subjects already present in conventional market coverage, so the investment case can be discussed in language closer to payments, foreign exchange, and market plumbing than to a purely speculative token story.
XRP ETFs net assets have grown 80% throughout Q3 to an all-time high of $1.77B.@Matt_Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at @Bitwise, on what's driving institutional demand for $XRP:
"XRP appeals for very simple reasons … One is that [financial advisors] are confident it's not… pic.twitter.com/7YXqVPpOj2
— Token Relations (@TokenRelations) September 28, 2026
That framing helps explain why regulated products have become a visible channel even when short-term price action is not the main argument.
Exchange-listed funds let advisors gain exposure through brokerage accounts they already use, without building direct custody for every client.
The third-quarter jump in ETF net assets to $1.77 billion is the backdrop Token Relations used when it published the clip.
Later flow data showed that asset totals and new subscriptions can diverge once the underlying price moves, which is consistent with Hougan’s separation of durability from price performance.
Cumulative inflows across the US spot products remained large after the September 25 peak, while mark-to-market asset values eased as XRP’s market price changed.
Hougan’s firm is itself an issuer in that market.
The Bitwise XRP ETF trades on NYSE Arca and charges a 0.34 percent annual expense ratio.
Updated fund materials around the end of September kept the offering current as shares continued to be issued.
Other sponsors, including Franklin, have also gathered substantial cumulative inflows, so the advisor channel is not limited to a single product.
The remarks describe a narrow form of institutional interest.
It is not a claim that every institution is allocating, or that XRP has displaced bitcoin as the default crypto holding.
It is an account of why some advisors, once they have an exchange-listed vehicle, find XRP easier to underwrite: a long record that speaks to permanence, and applications in stablecoins, cross-currency transfer, and liquidity that they already monitor.