Western Union has chosen Solana as the exclusive blockchain for its forthcoming US dollar–pegged stablecoin and a broader “Digital Asset Network,” a decision that immediately ricocheted through crypto social media and reignited long-running tribal feuds between XRP and Solana partisans. In an X post on Tuesday, Solana’s official account declared, “It’s official: @WesternUnion, the world’s largest money transfer business, is building exclusively on Solana,” pairing the claim with a launch reel featuring CEO Devin McGranahan.
Western Union’s plan centers on a dollar-backed token— dubbed the US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT)—with issuance by Anchorage Digital Bank and an initial rollout targeted for 2026. The initiative is part of a multi-pronged modernization effort that includes on- and off-ramps to cash via Western Union’s retail footprint and a settlement system designed to cut cost and latency in cross-border flows.
McGranahan framed the move as a continuation of the firm’s 175-year arc of adopting new rails to connect senders and recipients: “So for 175 years, we’ve been connecting people with technology, and we’ve been using that technology to move money. This is the next evolution, moving to digital assets and the ability to move money seamlessly, cost-effectively and rapidly everywhere around the world, using the infrastructure and the scale we already have with modern blockchain technology.”
He added: “We think this is the next evolution, not just in our history, but in how remittances happen around the world.” He added that after surveying “most of the other alternatives,” Western Union concluded “for an institutional use case like ours, the Solana blockchain was the right choice for us.”
9/11 For XRP?
The corporate positioning—“exclusively on Solana,” per the Solana account—was enough to trigger a sharp, if largely rhetorical, response cycle. Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Solana infrastructure provider Helius, posted the most incendiary soundbite, writing, “this is 9/11 for xrp mfers,” a line that instantly became the day’s headline and flashpoint for the XRP community.
Beyond the viral taunt, the market-structure question raised by Western Union’s move is straightforward: does a first-party, dollar-denominated instrument running on a high-throughput public chain obviate the need for a non-sovereign bridge asset like XRP in retail remittance corridors?
Community member nietzbux (@nietzbux) replied via X: ”Ripple partnered with Moneygram 6 years ago and it ended after the lawsuit. Western Union issuing a single USD stable coin on Solana is a nice adoption, but mostly a lukewarm event in today’s world of mass adoption.”
He criticized Solana’s messaging for making “your PR wins about another coin,” adding “You have to really be punching up to make your own PR release about another coin. All this has done is reveal the immense insecurities of SOL supporters including their official account. Eric Trump said to end tribalism – but here we are, still getting hate on a pretty mundane Western Union stable coin announcement.”
Another account Charting Guy (@ChartingGuy) tried to disentangle product categories entirely: “A lot of uneducated people saying this is bad for XRP and invalidates its use case. Guys, stablecoins have been around a long time lol. XRP’s use case is much different than stablecoins. Maybe read up on what the xrp ledger actually does & how xrp functions. This means nothing.”
At press time, XRP traded at $2.629.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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