Daily Crypto Signals: Ethereum Hits Record Contract Deployment, XRP Exchange Supply Hits 8-Year Lows
Ethereum has achieved a historic milestone with 8.7 million smart contracts deployed in the final quarter of 2025, signaling its cementing
Quick overview
- Ethereum has reached a historic milestone with 8.7 million smart contracts deployed in Q4 2025, solidifying its role as the global settlement layer for tokenized assets.
- XRP's exchange supply has dropped to its lowest level since 2018, creating a liquidity crunch as institutional ETFs accumulate the asset ahead of 2026.
- The cryptocurrency market is experiencing unstable macroeconomic conditions, with increasing interest in digital assets as a hedge against fiat currency devaluation.
- BlackRock's BUIDL fund has paid out $100 million in dividends, highlighting the growing integration of traditional finance with blockchain technology.
Ethereum ETH/USD has achieved a historic milestone with 8.7 million smart contracts deployed in the final quarter of 2025, signaling its cementing role as the global settlement layer for tokenized assets. Simultaneously, XRP’s XRP/USD exchange supply has plummeted to levels not seen since 2018, creating a massive liquidity crunch as institutional ETFs aggressively accumulate the asset ahead of 2026.
Crypto Market Developments: Macro Strains and Institutional Foundations
The global cryptocurrency industry is approaching 2026 with a strong combination of unstable macroeconomic conditions and a major change in how institutions use cryptocurrencies. Grayscale’s 2026 Digital Asset Outlook says that the “four-year cycle” that has been linked to Bitcoin halvings may be coming to a stop. Instead, there may be a long-term bull market driven by fundamental demand. Zach Pandl, the head of research at Grayscale, says that as government debt and fiscal deficits grow, more and more investors see “scarce digital commodities” like Bitcoin BTC/USD and Ethereum as important ways to protect themselves against the devaluation of fiat currency.
This week’s news from Iran was a clear example of this store-of-value story. The national rial fell to a historic low of 1.4 million per U.S. dollar, a huge drop from just 70 per dollar in the 1980s. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley called Bitcoin a “lifeboat” for those whose investments are disappearing because of bad economic management. This was said during protests in Tehran. The governor of the Central Bank of Iran has stepped down because of pressure, but this shows how useful borderless digital assets can be in places where inflation is out of control.
On the institutional side, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, which is its first tokenized money market fund, recently reached a milestone by paying out a total of $100 million in dividends. This milestone, made possible by the Securitize platform, shows that tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) may provide on-chain returns that can grow and stay legal. As traditional finance gets more involved with blockchain, progress on regulations is still inconsistent. The “Digital Asset Basic Act” in South Korea has been put on hold until 2026 because the Financial Services Commission and the Bank of Korea can’t agree on stablecoin legislation. Even though it has been delayed, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is still determined to create a stablecoin ecosystem underpinned by the won to defend the country’s monetary sovereignty.
Ethereum (ETH): The Institutional Settlement Layer
Ethereum’s network health has never been better, even though prices have been moving slowly for a while. According to Token Terminal, the number of new smart contracts made and published on the Ethereum blockchain reached an all-time high of 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. This rise is due to natural growth from a huge increase in stablecoin activity and the tokenization of real-world assets. Analysts call Ethereum the “institutional standard” since it has more than half of the world’s $307 billion in circulating stablecoins. Major financial institutions that want to use complicated on-chain apps usually use this network since it has a lot of liquidity and a strong security system.
Ethereum is currently moving through an important support-turned-resistance zone near $3,000. The Oct. 10 market liquidation event stopped the surge toward the previous all-time high of $5,000 for a short period, but the record-breaking contract deployment is seen as a “leading indicator” of how much the network will be used and how much it will cost in the future. As rollups and Layer-2 solutions grow, the base layer’s job as a finality and settlement engine is becoming more and more important. Many observers think that this increase in developer activity will eventually lead to higher prices as the demand for ETH to pay for “block space” grows along with the release of new institutional-grade products.
XRP Supply Shocks and ETF Drains
XRP is currently going through a “supply shock” that might shape its path through 2026. According to data from Glassnode, the amount of XRP held on centralized exchanges has plummeted to about 1.6 billion tokens, which is the lowest level since August 2018. This means that exchange balances have dropped by 45% in just the last 60 days. This huge outflow into private custody and institutional investment products shows that key holders don’t want to sell. The emergence of spot XRP ETFs is speeding up the drain on liquidity. Since they came out, they have brought in more than $1.15 billion in total, which keeps taking supply off the open market.
XRP is doing a good job of protecting a big demand zone on the charts that runs from $1.60 to $1.84. According to “UTXO realized price distribution” data, technical analysts say that the $1.78 level is the most important area of institutional support, where almost 1.87 billion tokens were recently bought. A lot of traders think that if XRP can hold this floor, it will break out of a “triple-bottom” pattern on the weekly timescale, with a price target of $3.79. As liquidity gets tighter and more institutions start using XRP for cross-border payments, it is ready to go from being a speculative asset to being a key part of the global financial system.
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