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.
u.today