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2026 begins on a quiet note across the crypto market, with crypto projects and leaders sending new year wishes on social media.
Ripple Senior Executive Officer and Managing Director, Middle East & Africa, Reece Merrick sends new year wishes to the XRP and crypto community on X while revealing expectations for the new year.
Merrick reveals fresh energy and optimism for the year 2026, asking "Who’s ready?" while sharing excitement for what's ahead in 2026.
The Ripple executive reflected on 2025, alluding to it as a great year while saying he was extremely excited for the wins ahead in 2026.
"Wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Grateful for how great 2025 was but I am extremely excited for the wins ahead in 2026," Merrick wrote.
Ripple opened 2026 with a massive 1 billion XRP unlock. Blockchain data tracker Whale Alert reports 1 billion XRP released from Ripple escrow in three tranches: 200,000,000 XRP worth $368,300,347, 300,000,000 XRP worth $552,443,645, 500,000,000 XRP worth $920,488,517.
Who's ready?
The expectations revealed by Ripple executive Reece Merrick align with those expressed by the rest of the crypto community.
As reported by U.Today, the official Solana X account expressed expectations for the year 2026, which it calls a "big year."
Nate Geraci, ETF Institute co-founder, reveals great expectations for the year 2026, citing a major win for Ripple and XRP in 2025.
"2025 started with active SEC lawsuit against Ripple and ended with spot xrp ETFs trading," Geraci said. The Ripple SEC lawsuit filed in December 2020 saw an official end in 2025, marking a victory for the XRP and crypto community.
Geraci calls the launch of crypto spot ETFs and crypto index ETFs huge progress, predicting that crypto will truly go mainstream in 2026.
2025 saw the launch of Ripple USD stablecoin RLUSD on its first Layer-2 (L2) networks. This comes ahead of an official debut this year pending regulatory approval. In December, testing began on Optimism, Base, Ink and Unichain, in partnership with Wormhole and its NTT token standard.
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