Rakuten and XRP: Are 100 Million People Really Using XRP?

“100 million people are now using XRP.” That claim spread quickly after a Ripple video about Rakuten in August. The video asks a simple question: where did the number come from? Nobody, not Rakuten, not Ripple and not any outlet covering the story, has published a figure for how many people actually use XRP through Rakuten.

The video traces five sentences about the same four-minute Ripple video, all published within 72 hours. One end is an accurate description. The other is a hint about the price of your XRP. Nobody lied at any step, and the video argues that’s what should bother holders most.

What did Ripple actually say?

Ripple’s own description was accurate. On August 12, Ripple published a 4-minute, 10-second video in its “On Chain Economy” series. The English description underneath says Rakuten has over 100 million members and 44 million active payment users.

Those are two different numbers, both correctly labeled, and both describe Rakuten’s business, not XRP’s. The description makes no claim about how many people use XRP and no claim about price.

But the title above it reads: “Bringing XRP to 100 million users.” The description says members; the title says users. The video’s point is that a title gets screenshotted and a description doesn’t get read, so you can guess which version traveled.

The description also says that loyalty points are “quietly lowering the barrier to crypto entry for millions of first-time holders.” As the video shows, no one has published how many people have actually used the feature.

What does the Rakuten feature actually do?

It lets existing Rakuten customers turn loyalty points into XRP. The man in Ripple’s video is Yasuo Matsuda, a senior analyst at Rakuten Wallet, and the interview is entirely in Japanese.

According to the video, he explains that Rakuten Wallet has offered XRP through margin trading since 2020. Customers kept asking for spot access, meaning the ability to hold XRP rather than trade it with leverage, and that’s what launched. So this isn’t 100 million people meeting XRP for the first time. It’s a company that has offered XRP for six years adding a feature its customers asked for.

The flow works like this:

1. Collect Rakuten points from normal shopping.
2. Convert the points into XRP.
3. Convert the XRP into Rakuten Cash.
4. Spend the Rakuten Cash at Rakuten merchants.

Matsuda’s key line, in translation, is that some people don’t want to risk their own money, but with points they might feel able to try. The video calls that sensible consumer psychology rather than a description of mass adoption, and says the product is genuinely useful for Rakuten customers with idle points.

Where did Ripple’s own copy slip?

In one clause. Ripple’s English description says the video covers what changes when XRP “can be spent directly without converting to local currency.” But Rakuten Cash is a yen balance. Converting XRP into it is a conversion into local currency, and it’s the step that makes the whole flow work.

The video suggests this was probably quick marketing copy. Still, it’s the first gap between what was built and what was said about it.

How did the headline change?

The video traces five steps:

Step	Source	Wording
1	Ripple’s description	“Over 100 million members and 44 million active payment users”
2	Ripple’s video title	“Bringing XRP to 100 million users”
3	The Crypto Basic	“XRP is reaching 100 million Rakuten users”
4	Coinpaper	“Rakuten unlocks XRP for more than 100 million users”
5	Cointelegraph	“Analyst signals possible repricing”

The video is fair to the outlets. It says The Crypto Basic’s article was accurate, reporting the margin trading since 2020 and the customer requests, and that only its headline moved. Coinpaper’s “unlocks” suggests a closed door suddenly opened, when Rakuten had offered XRP since 2020. Cointelegraph’s headline was the only one about price, and even it was hedged: “signals possible.” The video notes that qualifiers are the first thing to disappear when a headline becomes a screenshot.

Why does the Japanese-only video matter?

Because nobody had an English source to check. According to the video, there are no official English subtitles and no published English transcript from Ripple, Rakuten or anyone else. Every English quote in the coverage was either a machine translation or a journalist’s paraphrase of one.

The video presents the counterargument fairly. Rakuten Wallet is a Japanese product for Japanese customers, so why would anyone commission an English transcript? And headlines have always been shorter and louder than articles. The other side says that once you publish an English title claiming 100 million users, you’ve chosen an English-speaking audience, and a transcript becomes a minimum. The video doesn’t settle it.

This isn’t a one-off

The video points to the same pattern elsewhere. In April, Bitget Wallet integrated the XRP Ledger, and coverage said it gave its 90 million users access. Each announcement is sized by how many people are on the platform. None says how many people actually did anything.

The video also plays a clip of Ripple’s head of engineering describing work on the XRP Ledger: permissioned domains and a permissioned DEX that let financial institutions verify who they’re trading with, and a current focus on on-chain credit, lending and borrowing, tied to stablecoins like RLUSD. The video notes that the concrete features get concrete nouns, while XRP’s own role is described in broader language. It doesn’t call that evasive, just harder to pin down.

What the video says holders now know

1. Ripple got it right, then wrong, on the same page. The description was accurate. The title wasn’t. The careful version and the shareable version came from different instincts.
2. Accurate articles still produced escalating headlines. No single bad actor was needed: five ordinary steps, each slightly more confident than the last.
3. The key number doesn’t exist. No one has published how many people converted points into XRP or how much has gone through the feature.

The video adds that all five sentences circulated in the same week XRP closed below $1 on a weekly basis for the first time since November 20, 2024.

How to check the next headline

The video’s method takes minutes:

1. Find the original source.
2. Check what language it’s in.
3. Scroll down and read the description, not just the title.
4. Note the date.
5. Ask what number has actually been published.

The next big partnership headline will feel urgent. Running these five checks before acting on it is the habit the video recommends.