XRP

Ripple

Summary XRP now processes over $5 trillion a year, offering faster, cheaper, and more secure settlements than SWIFT’s legacy system. Ripple’s network expansion and CBDC pilots position XRP as the backbone for future global payments. CEO Brad Garlinghouse targets 14% of SWIFT’s $150 trillion volume, implying $40 trillion in flows by 2030. Fair value ranges from $10.97 to $66.67, suggesting 350% to 2,631% upside as adoption accelerates. Investment Thesis I give XRP ( XRP-USD ) a strong buy rating because Ripple has built an infrastructure that SWIFT does not match: a fast, low-cost network that is already moving approximately $5 trillion annually, with major banks and central banks jumping on board. Four months ago, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse projected that XRP could capture 14% of SWIFT’s $150 trillion transaction volume within five years and, if even a fraction of this projection materializes in the near future, then XRP may go from speculative token to the backbone for global payments. This is reflected in its valuation potential, with a bullish projection giving XRP a fair value of $66.67, implying a massive 2,631% upside from its current price and an unmatched potential for asymmetric upside driven by utility. A Quick Confession This is my 18th analysis on Seeking Alpha, and if you've followed me or read any of my previous articles, then you know that all of my analyses, no matter how bullish my position, has been on companies that I have no positions on. In fact, wrote an article on Alphabet six months ago, and I was called out on the fact that I gave the company a strong buy rating, yet I had no equity in the company. A highlighted Seeking Alpha comment (Author/Seeking Alpha) Well, I have a confession to make: I have only recently started to invest but not in any of the companies that I have covered previously. Rather, I currently have my entire portfolio allocated into one investment: XRP. So, why am I so heavily invested into XRP and not in any of the other equities that I have given strong buy ratings for? I hope that by the end of this article, my bullish thesis will make this clear. XRP's Whitepaper The best place to start analyzing any cryptocurrency is its whitepaper : The problem that Ripple Labs (a private tech company from here on referred to as Ripple) sets out to solve is to fix international money transfers; international money transfers are slow and costly, and they can often take up to three to five days on traditional systems such as SWIFT and have fees often ranging between 5 to 8%. This leaves the system vulnerable to delays, higher costs, and single points of failure (due to its overreliance on the SWIFT system) where any outages or hacks can halt funds. (Take, for example, the SWIFT cyberattacks of 2015-2016.) Thus, Ripple's goal is to make these international payments faster, cheaper, and more reliable, with instant settlement (i.e. settlements between three to five seconds as opposed to days) at the cost of less than that of a penny through the decentralized XRPL (i.e. the blockchain that records XRP transactions) that operates through more than 150 validators , or servers, that are run by universities, companies, and so on, while Ripple itself only operates one. Meanwhile XRP, through XRPL, is what converts currencies without the need for intermediary banks, thereby cutting costs and speeding up transactions via its decentralized blockchain. Essentially, without XRP, banks would have to search for another currency to do the same job, the catch being that no other competitors can operate with the speed and, especially, with the cost efficiency that XRP does on the XRPL blockchain. And this is XRP's competitive advantage, especially among other cryptocurrencies, which I go into further below: real-world utility value through improving the banking system. From Theory to Reality Let's take on-demand liquidity (from here on referred to as ODL), which is Ripple's service that uses XRP to make its cross-border payments: In Q2 2025, ODL processed $1.3 trillion in transactions ; this cut costs by 90% for banks such as Santander (NYSE: SAN ) via the less-than-five second transaction settlements mentioned above. Ripple has partnerships , with SBI Remit for example, that "uses XRP to settle remittances from Japan to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia," and with Tranglo, whose ODL volumes have surged 1,729% since forming its partnership with Ripple. Both of these partnerships have been crucial for Ripple's expansion of its global corridor, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. And its not just private banks: central banks are also jumping on board the Ripple network with "Bhutan's digital Ngultrum pilot and Palau's USD-backed stablecoin [PSC]." Both of these projects highlight XRP's role as a potential infrastructure for CBDCs, a sector that is "projected to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2030." As of now, 134 countries , representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring or developing CBDCs. Thus, in a future where CBDCs could be the norm for currency, XRP could be the backbone for these settlements. This, to me, is an underestimated market for XRP's future that is not talked about enough. Why Choose XRP Over... Bitcoin While I do believe Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) is the best cryptocurrency for store-of-value, with one of its main attractions being labeled that of "digital gold," its transaction speed is far too slow , taking 10 minutes to confirm transactions and only being able to handle seven transactions per second (from here on abbreviated to TPS) maximum; this also makes scalability an issue. XRP, on the other hand, supports 1,500 TPS under standard conditions, making it more than 214 times faster than Bitcoin's, with fees being less than a penny in comparison to Bitcoin's transaction fees ranging from $1 to $10 that can go even higher during peak times. Ethereum Then there's Ethereum ( ETH-USD ), whose main strength lies in smart contracts and its ability to host apps on its network such as Uniswap, as well as wallets such as MetaMask and Trust Wallet. However, using it for high-volume payments isn't practical given its TPS of 16.91 and gas fees ranging from $0.50 and under , with congestion being able to double the cost of fees in just a matter of minutes. Solana And then we have Solana ( SOL-USD ) that has a much higher speed than XRP , regularly processing around 3,000 to 4,000 TPS and is able to handle a theoretical maximum of 65,000 TPS. Its main issue, however, is its history with network outages that have made it unreliable for banking infrastructure, as well as centralization concerns where, as of April 2025 , the top 100 validators (i.e. independent computers verifying and securing transactions) on the Solana network controlled over 50% of its entire stake. Stellar Finally, we have Stellar ( XLM-USD ) that is closest in kin to XRP since it was created by Ripple's co-founder Jed McCaleb who used XRPL's open-source to create Stellar's blockchain. But while Stellar is also fast, currently on the road to scale to 5,000 TPS , and low cost, it doesn't threaten XRP's moat of improving the banking system because of its peer-to-peer focus on individuals and small businesses and, therefore, lacks the institutional attention from banks or governments. Supply & Tokenomics: Designed for Stability Before getting into XRP's valuation, it's necessary to discuss its supply and circulation. Creation Whereas Bitcoin continues to mine new coins until it hits 21 million, all of XRP's 100 billion units were created in 2012 with no new issuance model (i.e. no ability to create more XRP than the original created amount). This avoids the energy waste necessary to mine new coins, which has been a criticism of Bitcoin, for example, since Bitcoin has the annualized carbon footprint of the Czech Republic. Supply Ripple currently has around 35 billion XRP locked into a series of escrows using XRPL; in other words, the blockchain that processes rules, and is enforced by the validator consensus, controls the release of XRP. Each month, one billion XRP is released from escrow for use with unused XRP placed back into escrow for release 55 months later. However, for every one billion that is released, only about 200 to 300 million are distributed or sold monthly, meaning that 70 to 80% is put back into escrows to avoid supply shocks and to provide predictability. This also helps the ecosystem and partners reliant on the system, such as Santander, who can see every release on the XRPL ledger and knows exactly how much is available. Deflation XRP is also deflationary, with each XRP transaction burning 0.00001 to 0.00002 XRP . To date, 14.23 million XRP has been burned and is now permanently out of circulation, ensuring the stability needed for the banking system. Valuation Method I'll admit that I wanted to write an article on XRP some months back, but I wasn't quite sure just how to value a cryptocurrency. I had to read the book Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond , specifically the chapter on how to do fundamental analysis and value cryptoassets—and I had to read it a few times over at that. But, what follows is their framework for cryptoasset valuation: We divide a digital asset's transaction volume [T] by its velocity [V]—in this case how many times each XRP is used per year—to get us our market cap [MV]. Dividing the market cap [MV] by the supply [B] gets us our price per XRP. We apply a discount to adjust for risks, such as regulation, adoption delays, and so on, over a time horizon. XRP's Valuation What drives XRP's worth is its position in the $1 quadrillion global cross-border payments market, with XRP handing $5 trillion in yearly payment volume, $1.3 trillion processed in Q2 2025 alone. Let's start with the most bullish scenario. I mentioned earlier that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse projected that XRP could capture "14% of SWIFT’s transaction volume within five years." SWIFT currently processes around $150 trillion per year. Thus, 14% of that would mean $21 trillion, which is a massive leap from XRP's current $5 trillion yearly payment volume. And we can't forget that cross-border flows are expected to rise to nearly $290 trillion by 2030, which means that 14% of SWIFT's share would be closer to $40 trillion. So, let's take Garlinghouse's projections of $40 trillion in annual cross-border flows and assume a velocity of 8, which is a high turnover for payments, a supply of 75 billion XRP, which is a reasonable projection given XRP's current 60 billion in circulation , thereby adding an additional 15 billion by 2030, and apply a 25% discount over five years to account for risks such as slower than expected adoption and regulation. These assumptions imply a fair value of $66.67 per XRP, which is a massive 2,631% upside from XRP's current price, as of the time of this writing, where XRP currently sits at $2.44. Data by YCharts But without wanting to sound too overly optimistic, I have my chart below with three different scenarios. Garlinghouse's projections above constitute our bull case, while my base case assumes $15 trillion in annual cross-border flows, a velocity of 10, and a supply of 76 billion XRP using the same discount of 25%, which gets us a fair value of $10.97. And my bear case maintains XRP's current $5 trillion in annual cross-border flows, thereby assuming no growth, a velocity of 15, and a supply of 78 billion XRP using the same discount of 25%, which gets us a fair value of $2.38. Table showing XRP valuation scenarios. (Author) Thesis Risks As far as I know, there are three threats to XRP's path to $66.67. Stablecoin Competition : Tether currently has a $183.3 billion market cap, as well as a near-instant settlement time. So, if we can suppose that banks come to prefer stablecoins for cross-border payments, then XRP’s $5 trillion volume would, no doubt, stall. However, I believe XRP's 1,500 TPS still gives it an edge over stablecoins. Escrow Missteps : As mentioned above, Ripple releases 1 billion XRP monthly with 70 to 80% being put back into escrows. But if this percentage decreases and the circulating supply increases, suppose it hits 85 billion instead of my projected 75 billion instead, then its fair value would be cut by around 12%. Regulatory Headwinds : The EU's crypto law, MiCA , requires new licensing and compliance for exchanges and stablecoins, and this could push banks to use a euro-backed stablecoin instead of XRP. And in the U.S., laws banning a digital dollar would favor private U.S. stablecoins. Still, XRP's CBDC pilots in Bhutan and Palau make it a bridge for international cross-border payments, and I'm not quite sure how a euro-backed stablecoin would compete. Conclusion So, after finally analyzing many equities and assets I have never owned, this one has finally made me go from spectator to owner. Ripple has built an ecosystem that is faster, cheaper, and more secure than the current SWIFT system, and it is already processing trillions. But I think its selling point is its future in what could be the next era of money for both the banking system and for CBDCs. Even if only a fraction of Garlinghouse’s 14% target is captured, there's still plenty of upside for the investor. Thus, I believe that XRP is precisely at the point where Visa was before the credit revolution: a system that is on the brink of global adoption.