XRP: Will The Coin Exceed $10?

With giants such as Bitcoin and Ethereum still considered top-dogs in the crypto space, some lesser known but valuable tokens have steadily been creeping up to the top of the pile. One of these tokens is Ripple’s XRP, which has been pretty much the talk of the town in recent months. The on-going lawsuit with the SEC created bad press for the company, but interest from banks and financial institutions makes this coin very promising. With many whales having adopted the coin, could XRP reach $10 ?

XRP price

While March and April were quite the roller-coaster ride for XRP as prices almost tripled to reach an all-time-high of $3.90 in mid-April; the coin corrected to $0.90 in the summer months. The 80% drop in valuation slowed things down for XRP, but currently it’s trading at over $1.10 as of October 15. Despite the dip, the whales expect big things from Ripple’s cryptocurrency.

From the highly exclusive RippleNet ledger that makes the crypto-token ideal for financial institutions, to the slight advantage it has over Bitcoin, here’s why whales and investors are buying XRP.

With a 24-hour trading volume of $6.4 billion, XRP is currently trading at $1.06. October has been a strong month for big cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has passed the crucial $60,00 mark and reached an all-time high of over $67,000 by gaining more than 70% in the last 2 weeks, whereas coins like Polygon’s Matic and Ethereum have been among the big gainers of the week. While XRP may not have made such a big impact, the coin has gained almost 15% in the last two weeks alone. The coin has been trading in a sideways trend for the past few weeks, but this small breakout could be a taste of what investors are expecting out of XRP.

About XRP

XRP, which is currently the native currency to the company Ripple, has a maximum supply of 100 billion coins. 80% of the supply was sold to the company Opencoin, which dissolved and became Ripple in 2015. While the company still holds the majority of the XRP in the world, a select amount has been put in escrow which cannot be accessed on a regular basis.

What is interesting about the blockchain of the cryptocurrency is that it does not use either proof-of-work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to run. The XRP network uses the XRP ledger consensus protocol which provides the cryptocurrency with a decentralised network. This is one of the main reasons why the cryptocurrency is very efficient and speedy in its transactions.

To make sure the company remains transparent, it has opened up its earnings and reports to the general public to see. For example, at the end of 2020, Ripple disclosed their Q4 earnings which revealed a 90% increase year-on-year.

Sales increased from $76 million to more than $150 million, showing the massive success of the company in such a short time period.

Whales Buying XRP

In terms of XRP, a specific wallet holding more than 10 million XRP is described as a whale. In 2021 alone, despite the huge lawsuit which the SEC and Ripple have been a part of, the whales have shot up by 1.25%. This may not seem like a lot, but it means that over 20 wallets with over 10 million XRP have suddenly come into the mix. The total wealth amounts to $1.4 billion of the coin, and with a 24 hour trading volume of over $5 billion, a massive sale would most definitely cause a market crash for XRP.

XRP commented on the situation claiming that, “The number of whale wallets, defined as wallets with a balance of at least 10 million XRP, increased from 308 to 319. Similarly, the number of wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP increased from 1,125 to 1,196.

According to Newsbtc, the coin may not be far from targeting $12 per token after a major breakout. But remember, this is a volatile market where huge losses as well as profits occur on a daily basis. So do not put in more than you can afford to lose.

The company also mentioned that the number of wallets grew as a result of on-ledger activity increasing. In fact, the number of total-on ledger wallet addresses increased 15% from 2.35 million to 2.70 million. Despite the fact that Ripple has had to bear the brunt of investigations by the securities and exchange commission; all these positives allowed the company to grow to never-seen heights, leading to a highly profitable final quarter in 2021.

What Makes XRP Attractive To Financial Institutions?

Apart from being used as an investment and a decentralised platform, XRP has added functionality in the form of RippleNet. This is a network designed by Ripple with the goal of bringing multiple financial institutions under the same roof. The goal of creating a global payment system is pretty ambitious, but it seems to have heightened interests from many different top players.

Examples of companies jumping on-board include the E-commerce platform Trivala that allows you to book flights via various cryptos; another company is WireX which offers travel cards to customers to exchange and spend crypto currencies.

The long-term plan for Ripplenet is to create this multi-global payment system by facilitating more than 200+ banks and payment providers worldwide. This will allow the involved players to enjoy faster transaction time periods, access a standardized network of institutions worldwide and reduce capital requirements. As we speak, the success of RippleNet has led to the addition of some huge institutions in their sector.

Bank of America, SBI Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank, Santander and American Express are just a few of the many institutions that have joined the Ripple network.

The XRP team is also hopeful that the Ripple blockchain will be adopted by more significant financial institutions once the lawsuit has been cleared.

XRP vs Bitcoin.

While XRP is nowhere near the price of Bitcoin, it outperforms BTC in one crucial aspect. XRP is extremely popular in the crypto space due to its positive environmental impact. While cryptos like Bitcoin have been notorious for using a lot of energy resources such as fossil fuels to mine coins; XRP uses renewable energy and allows thousands of transactions to take place every second. The XRP ledger is also the first major carbon neutral blockchain; making it a lucrative proposition for so many business enterprises around the world.

Bitcoin faced a lot of flak when billionaire Elon Musk stated that he would not accept BTC payments for Tesla purchases due to the negative environmental impact it creates. This goes to show that although XRP has a few elements to work on, it is one token which is providing not only investors, but institutions with real-world value thanks to RippleNet. While the coin is only trading slightly higher than $1.10, the end of the lawsuit should affect the price positively.

As it currently stands, Ripple’s XRP is still the 7th largest cryptocurrency in the world in terms of market cap.

Can XRP go past $10 ?

CryptonewsZ has an optimistic outlook for XRP in the coming years. Their prediction states that the coin will beat its previous high of $3.84 by the end of the year, which would be more than a 3x gain, with the deciding factors being the settlement of the SEC lawsuit. An optimistic price prediction by the analysts also indicates that the coin may trade around the $8 range by 2025.

As great as that sounds, others have a more optimistic outlook. Cryptobull took to twitter to give his prediction. Showing the historical price graph, the twitter user claimed that the coin could be trading at $13 in this bull run.

https://twitter.com/CryptoBull2020/status/1451992791467372547

Remember, that crypto assets are very volatile. Make sure to do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose.