Rob Cunningham: 2026 Addressable Money System’s 10x Infrastructure Leader

Rob Cunningham | KUWL.show
@KuwlShow

2026 Addressable Money System’s 10x Infrastructure Leader

Global nominal GDP for 2026 is commonly estimated around $120T+ (e.g., ~$123.6T estimate cited in widely shared compilations).
So we’re comparing firms trying to become infrastructure inside the pipes of that economy – not just “a crypto project.”

@Ripple vs closest competitor (@circle): how much larger “on the whole”?

1) Institutional network depth (production relationships)

• Ripple: RippleNet is widely reported at 300+ financial institutions, with a meaningful subset using XRP for liquidity/settlement (often cited ~40%).
  
• Circle: Circle Payments Network reported 29 FIs enrolled, 55 in review, “500 in the pipeline” (as of late 2025).

Order-of-magnitude: Ripple is ~10× larger today on “institutions already on the network and operating,” vs Circle’s still-ramping network layer.

2) Regulatory & licensing footprint (ability to operate as a payments company)

• Ripple: reported 55+ global money transmitter licenses, including 33 U.S. states (as of Jan 2025 reporting).
  
• Circle: Circle publicly lists state MT licensing + NYDFS virtual currency permissions, but Circle’s own disclosures emphasize state licensing posture (and evolving federal aspirations).

Order-of-magnitude: Ripple appears multiple-times larger on “licenses in hand across jurisdictions,” and – more importantly – has the posture of a firm built around regulated cross-border movement rather than primarily stablecoin issuance + platforms.

3) Treasury/escrow “strategic dry powder” (unique to Ripple)

• Ripple/XRP escrow: on-chain trackers show tens of billions of XRP escrowed (example snapshot: ~34.2B escrowed on XRPSCAN).

Circle doesn’t have an analogous “escrowed native bridge asset” strategic reserve (it has USDC reserves backing a liability, which is a totally different creature).

Order-of-magnitude: On this dimension Ripple is in a category of its own with orders of magnitude more “strategic optionality” than any competitor with no comparable native-asset treasury.

4) Public headcount estimates vary by source, but typically cluster around:

• Ripple: roughly 900 to 1,500 depending on dataset and date.
• Circle: commonly cited around ~800 – 950 depending on source.

Ripple is not “10× bigger” by headcount. The “far and away larger” story comes from network depth + licensing + escrowed asset + product-line breadth, not raw staff.

5) Federal trust-bank trajectory (a “next phase” signal)

Reuters reported OCC preliminary approvals (Dec 12, 2025) for multiple crypto firms – including Ripple & Circle- to establish national trust banks (preliminary, not final). That suggests both are converging toward similar regulatory endpoints, even if Ripple’s payments-network footprint is vastly broader.

Ripple vs @StellarOrg (closest “payments DLT” analog)

• Stellar/SDF employee estimates are far smaller (example estimate ~316).
  
• Stellar’s ecosystem has meaningful RWA/tokenization activity, but it’s not the same “enterprise payments company with licensing + compliance stack” posture Ripple runs.

Order-of-magnitude: Ripple is far larger on “regulated payments operator footprint” (licenses + enterprise go-to-market).

Bottom-line

If you weight the categories the way the real world does (regulated ability to move money at scale + live institutional network + compliance footprint + balance-sheet/escrow optionality):

• Ripple vs closest competitor (Circle):
• ~10× advantage on live institutional network scale today (RippleNet vs current CPN enrolled).
• ~2–3× advantage on licensing breadth
• Category-defining moat via XRP escrow (no direct analog).

Ripple is plausibly an order of magnitude (≈10×) ahead of the closest “regulated institutional settlement network” competitor on the network dimension, and it has a unique strategic asset reserve (XRP) that makes the gap feel “far and away larger” when you’re thinking in Internet-of-Value monetary plumbing terms. @Interledger

2026 Addressable Money System’s 10x Infrastructure Leader

Global nominal GDP for 2026 is commonly estimated around $120T+ (e.g., ~$123.6T estimate cited in widely shared compilations).
So we’re comparing firms trying to become infrastructure inside the pipes of that economy -… pic.twitter.com/5m4Jx21Lc1

— Rob Cunningham | KUWL.show (@KuwlShow) January 10, 2026

Source(s):
https://x.com/KuwlShow/status/2009972376847495649

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