Pantera CEO Dan Morehead Says Ripple (XRP) Is Taking Aim at SWIFT

Dan Morehead Puts Ripple in SWIFT's Lane

Pantera Capital founder and CEO Dan Morehead said during a CNBC appearance that Ripple is positioning itself to challenge SWIFT, the global messaging network banks rely on to transmit cross-border payment instructions. Morehead made the remark while discussing how blockchain technology serves multiple fundamental use cases across finance, framing Ripple as one of the ventures taking direct aim at SWIFT's territory. The comment spread quickly among supporters of XRP as a settlement asset, with commentators on X reading it as a bullish signal that ties Ripple's payments strategy to the token's long-term role. Some community accounts compared the moment to the 2017-2020 period, when the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple interrupted the previous cycle, while the company continued building payment infrastructure throughout the legal process. The distinction between Ripple the company and the latest XRP developments remains central: Morehead described Ripple's strategy, and the market maps it onto the token.

XRPL Account Creations Jump Above 11,000

On-chain data from XRPScan shows the XRP Ledger activated 11,432 new accounts in September, more than four times the roughly 2,700-account 30-day average, with the dashboard's 24-hour reading showing a 245.1% increase. The figure stays below the all-time high of 30,600 and the roughly 15,000 peak recorded earlier in 2026, but it ranks among the largest surges of the past year. The cause is not yet identified: exchange infrastructure, wallet migrations, application onboarding, or speculative activity can all drive account-creation spikes, and raw data alone cannot attribute the activations. The surge coincided with price swings. XRP had broken above a descending resistance line, running from about $1.40 to a local high near $1.65 before sellers pushed it back toward $1.46 — the move that put the asset above $1.60 for the first time since February on heavy whale activity. The 200-day moving average sits near $1.36, the former resistance cluster at $1.39-$1.40 underpins the recovery structure, and $1.50 is the first upside level to reclaim.

Permission Delegation Vote Slips to 80%

Governance on the ledger is moving in parallel. Validators are voting on PermissionDelegationV1_1, an amendment that lets an account delegate specific operations — signing payments, or approving token holdings for KYC-verified customers of a stablecoin issuer — to another account without surrendering full control. On September 21 the proposal drew support from 29 of 35 trusted validators, briefly triggering a 14-day activation countdown. As of September 24, support had slipped to 28 of 35, or 80%, below the threshold required. Under XRPL's amendment process — which, unlike Delegated Proof of Stake voting on other chains, requires sustained supermajority backing — a feature must hold more than 80% of trusted validators for two consecutive weeks to reach mainnet, so support must recover and then hold again. The design allows a master key to stay offline in a cold wallet while a delegated account handles routine operations. PermissionDelegationV1_1 shipped in xrpld 3.3.0, released August 6, fixing a critical bug in the original version.

SEC Opens Tokenized Stock Path for AMMs

The regulatory backdrop shifted on September 17, when the SEC's own order granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief to Tokenized Securities Venues from the “exchange” definition in the Exchange Act. The exemption lets eligible venues trade tokenized National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools, with conditional relief also covering certain liquidity providers, for a period of five years. Conditions are strict: permissioned systems, investor-protection requirements, tokenized shares carrying the same rights as traditional ones including dividends and voting, issuer objections to third-party tokenization, and halts synced to the underlying stock. The order does not mention XRP, Ripple, or the XRP Ledger — it is technology-neutral. The relevance is structural: XRPL's native AMM, activated via the XLS-30 amendment on March 22, 2024, is built into the ledger's decentralized exchange, where providers earn LP tokens through liquidity pools distinct from concentrated liquidity designs and trades can blend order-book and AMM routing for the better rate. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

the SEC's own orderhttps://x.com/SECGov/status/2100571317128888364?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Infrastructure Story Rebuilds Around XRPL

Four threads in a single week — a fund manager placing Ripple against SWIFT, an unexplained account surge, a governance vote, and a regulator's tokenized-stock framework — point the same direction: the XRP Ledger's payments and market infrastructure is maturing on several fronts at once. The load-bearing document here is the SEC order itself, which states the relief is temporary, conditional and technology-neutral; nothing in it endorses XRP, and the significance for holders is infrastructure-level rather than an immediate new use case. The spot tape reminds of the gap between fundamentals and price — XRP is down 5.9% over the past 24 hours — while long-cycle optimists still point to Peter Brandt's $5.40 target. The open question is whether institutions walk through the door the regulator has opened.