At today's price near $3.60, XRP (XRP -3.05%) already feels like a train after it left the platform. Yet a quick 50% sprint to $5 wouldn't be so different from how it hit its 2021 high, so it's likely that the party is just getting started.
XRP's story has always been about expediting the transfer of assets across borders faster and cheaper than legacy banking tech. During the next 24 months, a cluster of institutional, technical, and policy catalysts could tighten supply, deepen demand, and make the $5 price look like the new norm. Here's why I predict it will happen.
These catalysts are having a strong effect
XRP is hot right now because it's exposed to quite a few positive catalysts.
The first catalyst is the steady adoption of XRP's payment solutions as a result of hard work by the company that issues it, Ripple. More than 400 financial institutions now connect to Ripple Payments, and they are processing live flows in more than 80 markets using the XRP coin in the backend. Each new payment corridor obliges partners to buy and then park some XRP as pre‑funded liquidity, so token demand ratchets higher alongside transaction volume.
Next comes the quiet migration of central bank stablecoin pilots from the whiteboard to real‑world production.
Bhutan's and Palau's stablecoins already run on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), and at least half a dozen other monetary authorities are experimenting in sandbox programs. Once a central bank codes its payment plumbing around XRP, ripping it out later is unlikely, and more pilot programs are almost certainly on the way. Some countries may even end up deploying a central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the XRPL.
Image source: Getty Images.
A third significant tailwind is the gathering tokenization wave.
Real‑world assets (RWAs) on XRPL topped $118 million in mid-July, leaping from less than $20 million one year prior. Although that figure trails competitors like Ethereum by orders of magnitude, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) projects that there will be as much as $16.1 trillion in tokenized securities by 2030. If XRP captures even 1% of that market, the value parked on its chain would swell to roughly $161 billion, or about 10 times its current market cap -- so it hardly needs to capture a lot of the value to hit $5.
Finally, fresh liquidity is on the docket.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will likely greenlight an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) within months, opening the floodgates for sidelined institutional capital to pour in. When buyers collide with a thin float of coins available for public trading, thanks to long‑time holders who rarely sell, prices can jump quickly.
These risks are real too
While XRP is far more likely to hit $5 soon than to go back to $1, there are a number of risks that could derail the gains.
Regulatory whiplash is the foremost concern. The SEC dropped its legal action against Ripple, which it accused of selling unregistered securities, but a change in political winds could revive calls for bank‑style oversight of cross‑border settlement tokens. The probability is moderate -- the agency's attention has lately shifted toward stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) -- but politics tend to be fickle.
Execution risk is another wild card. Combining stablecoins, lending utilities, and CBDC tooling is technically demanding, and a major security lapse or buggy upgrade could scare off institutions. That will be especially true if the bugginess is identified in regulatory compliance automation, which is a major value add for the chain in the eyes of its target institutional users.
The chance of a detrimental macroeconomic squeeze rounds out the risk ledger here. Global liquidity has remained loose since mid‑2024, but a credit shock or abrupt Federal Reserve pivot would sap risk appetite in a flash.
The odds are very favorable
XRP has endured long winters and delivered explosive springs. What's different today is that institutional use is measurable and growing, rather than being hypothetical. Tokenization and ETF demand could amplify every uptick by constricting float just when new value is looking for exposure.
If you can stomach volatility and regulatory uncertainty, accumulating a position is a good plan. Within two years, you should be sitting on a coin that's worth more than $5 each.
