SBI Holdings' decision to pivot its blockchain venture from R3's Corda to Solana has stirred fresh anxiety among XRP holders, but several analysts argue the move is being misinterpreted. The Japanese financial giant announced on July 13 that it is renaming SBI R3 Japan to SBI Solana Global, bringing in the Solana Foundation as a shareholder and committing to build stablecoin, RWA tokenization, and settlement infrastructure on Solana. Within hours, warnings of a 50% XRP crash circulated widely.
The concern is understandable. SBI has been Ripple's most important institutional partner for nearly a decade, and the new venture's focus on stablecoins and cross-border settlement overlaps directly with XRPL's core use cases. Motley Fool analyst Johnny Rice warned that XRP could fall to $0.54, questioning whether Ripple's commercial growth translates into demand for the token when RLUSD and other blockchains can serve similar functions.
Yet the partnership narrative is more nuanced than a simple swap. SBI and Ripple jointly launched RLUSD in Japan just weeks before the Solana announcement, signaling that the decade-old relationship remains active. "SBI is pursuing a multichain strategy, not replacing XRP," one analyst noted. Different networks suit different products , Solana for high-throughput tokenization, XRPL for cross-border settlement and liquidity , and SBI appears to be betting on both.
The market may already be pricing this in. Despite the bearish headlines, XRP has shown no signs of a sharp sell-off directly tied to the news. Some technicians point to a rare oversold RSI reading on XRP's weekly chart , only the second such signal in the token's history , as a potential setup for a reversal rather than further downside.
For long-term XRP supporters, the SBI-Solana partnership may ultimately prove benign. Institutional adoption of any blockchain expands the overall pie, and SBI's continued dual-track investment in both Ripple and Solana suggests confidence in crypto infrastructure broadly , not a vote against any single network.