In January 2025, XRP (XRP -2.31%) was one of the hottest cryptocurrencies on the planet. At one point, XRP was up nearly 600% after the 2024 presidential election, and the chart for XRP was wonderfully, beautifully parabolic.
But it’s been a tougher slog of late. For the year, XRP is up a modest 6% and has traded within a relatively narrow band around the $2 price level since March. Where is XRP headed next? Is more explosive growth on the horizon? Let’s take a closer look.
Potential catalysts for XRP
The good news is that XRP’s regulatory problems appear to be behind it. For more than four years, the SEC has been trying to classify XRP as a “security.” However, given the pro-crypto approach of the Trump administration, the SEC has now backed away from its claims, and the legal battle against Ripple (the company behind the XRP token) has finally ended.
In theory, a resolution of this case opens the door for massive new expansion and growth at Ripple, especially within the U.S. market. That’s a big reason why the price of XRP skyrocketed in value after the 2024 election — investors were already beginning to price in the upside potential for XRP under a crypto-friendly administration.
Earlier in the year, XRP appeared to be a frontrunner as the next cryptocurrency to gain SEC approval for a new spot ETF. Only two other cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin and Ethereum — have spot ETFs, so XRP would be in some pretty exclusive company.
A new spot ETF would open the door for a much broader range of retail and institutional investors to buy XRP, helping to push up its price over time. However, given the current tariff uncertainty, it looks like the SEC won’t be approving any new spot ETFs until the end of 2025 at the earliest.
But even if the ETF catalyst doesn’t work out as planned, there are other potential catalysts. One of the most exciting of these involves stablecoins, which have become a $200 billion industry.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, and backed by cash and cash equivalents. They’re important because they are the bridge between the worlds of traditional finance (which needs physical dollars) and decentralized finance (which needs digital dollars).
Ripple has its own stablecoin
At the end of 2024, Ripple launched a stablecoin of its own called Ripple USD (RLUSD -0.02%). The thinking was that Ripple USD would help spur growth of the XRP payment network. Currently, the primary use case for XRP is making cheap, fast cross-border payments. However, if XRP has a companion stablecoin, Ripple can then start to offer all sorts of new financial products and services featuring XRP.
It all sounds great, but Ripple USD hasn’t grown quite as quickly as expected, so Ripple recently launched a $5 billion acquisition bid for Circle, the company behind the much bigger USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) stablecoin. That bid has now been rejected, but the current speculation is that Ripple could soon raise its bid to $20 billion for Circle. Stablecoins have become a big business, and Ripple wants to be part of it.
How high can XRP go?
If there’s any cryptocurrency that’s prone to wild, pie-in-the-sky forecasts, it’s XRP. It’s incredibly easy to find price forecasts for XRP above $10, and even above the $100 price mark. There are even some AI-powered predictions suggesting that XRP could skyrocket above $500 by 2050.
Image source: Getty Images.
But let’s back up for a second. The all-time high for XRP is just $3.84, and that occurred in 2018. Yes, XRP came close to regaining that all-time high in January, but other than that, it has never come close. Take a look at a long-term chart for XRP — it’s fairly unremarkable, aside from the massive price spikes in 2018 and 2024.
For XRP to hit a price above $10 by 2030, it would likely require a massive surge in institutional adoption. And I mean massive. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, for example, has suggested the XRP payment network might eventually challenge SWIFT as the premier cross-border payment network in the world.
As Garlinghouse recently pointed out in a Fox Business interview, SWIFT is based on 50-year-old technology. So Ripple has the potential to offer faster, cheaper, and more reliable global payments using modern blockchain technology.
In the past, I’ve been skeptical about XRP, primarily due to all the regulatory drama swirling around it for so long. But if the regulatory shackles are truly off, then I’m much more bullish on XRP’s future growth prospects. Just keep your expectations in check. If XRP doubles in price by 2030, I would take that as a win.