A panel of
BlackRock, Ripple and XRP after Davos
Host Versan Aljarrah opened by pointing out “BlackRock and Brad Garlinghouse in Davos” and asked guest Jake Claver what he took from their presence and the “conclusion they had there.” Claver’s response focused on what he said he heard from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink about the consolidation of the settlements.
“He said it would be ideal if everything were on one blockchain or at least returned to one blockchain,” Claver said. “Because Ripple is in the room and has been in the room for years at this point, it gives me a lot of confidence that it’s the XRPL […] I feel like BlackRock and Ripple are much more involved than people realize.”
Today we are joined by @beyond_broke to discuss BlackRock’s hush-hush ties with Ripple, the soft revelations surrounding XRP, and the future of digitalization and tokenization.
I’m glad everyone is back together for this.https://t.co/oMHGWqMehB pic.twitter.com/u1s7LyOAhs
— Black Swan Capitalist (@VersanAljarrah) January 26, 2026
Aljarrah immediately expanded the claim beyond Davos-stagecraft, claiming: “It’s pretty clear at this point that Blackrock, JP Morgan, Ripple and all these big banks have some ties to Ripple [and] “
Related reading
David (Digital Outlook) pushed the discussion towards implementation, but repeatedly brought BlackRock back into the picture as a common thread in Ripple’s institutional strategy. “When it came out to like, okay, Ripple really positioned itself to be like […] the main leader in space […] with the acquisitions they have made […] custody at Palisade,” he said. ‘I think they have Metaco and Standard Custody there […] Hidden Road approval, all that. Than […] you see all these other connections between their partners, like what they’re doing with Blackrock. You know, they have something to do there.”
A second argument was that BlackRock’s eventual entry could be the trigger for an XRP liquidity event. Edo Farina put it in terms of ‘order size’: ‘It takes one huge institutional order from a Blackrock at scale and that’s it,’ he said, claiming that market prices can remain muted if institutional positioning is done through OTC arrangements.
Related reading
Claver added, “When Blackrock steps in, there will likely be a supply shock that could cause XRP to decouple from the rest of the crypto market and Bitcoin,” tying that idea to a viral episode, the panel said, that briefly put XRP out of step with the rest of crypto. “We saw it disconnected once […] when […] the [fake] trust filed in Delaware for Blackrock’s iShares XRP ETF […] go to Twitter,” Claver said.
Yet BlackRock’s observable crypto footprint still remains leaning towards Ethereum and Bitcoin instead of XRP. BlackRock’s main US spot exposure is through products tracking bitcoin and ether, IBIT and ETHA, while the tokenization bridgehead was also an Ethereum first: BlackRock’s BUIDL fund debuted on Ethereum via Securitize in March 2024 and only later expanded to additional networks.
Also, BlackRock’s own thematic vision for 2026 explicitly names Ethereum as the infrastructure layer that “collects the toll” as tokenization scales, treating stablecoins as an early proxy for tokenization “in action.” BlackRock highlights data showing that “65%+” of tokenized assets are on Ethereum, an argument why “one blockchain” speculation in institutional circles often defaults to ETH.
At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $1.88.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com