Buy XRP until it does

Back in 2024, XRP (Crypto: XRP) Seemed like a great investment. Parent company Ripple Labs was wrapping up its long-running legal woes, and election results pointed to a more crypto-friendly administration. And XRP traded at $0.70 per coin in early November of that year, making its total market value a paltry $41 billion.

At that point things changed. XRP skyrocketed, peaking at $2.70 by December 2nd and $3.30 by mid-January 2025. At the time, XRP was a crypto giant. With a market value of $182 billion, only Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (Crypto: ETH) had a large footprint.

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That jump was too much, too fast. XRP was priced for absolute perfection, leaving little room for further gains and a steep downside. Coins were no longer the top choice, in my opinion.

The price chart has declined since July, mainly due to macroeconomic uncertainty. The downturn applies to most of the crypto market, but XRP took a deeper six-month plunge than Ethereum or Bitcoin. It’s down more than 50% from the peak, and the valuation isn’t holding me back anymore.

All told, XRP has nearly doubled since the 2024 election week, which seems fitting with the lawsuit’s resolution. But I’m still not buying XRP until people and financial institutions actually start using it.

XRP was designed to facilitate cross-border payments. Ripple Labs introduced it as a faster, cheaper alternative to the SWIFT network (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) that banks use for this purpose today. The idea is compelling; International wire transfers can take days and cost a fortune in fees. XRP transactions are settled in seconds and cost fractions of a penny.

So XRP sounds good on paper. In practice, Ripple has announced dozens of partnerships with banks and payment providers over the years. However, most of these pilots did not scale to meaningful transaction volumes. The company doesn’t disclose how much XRP it actually flows through its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, so investors have been looking at related press releases of late and hoping for the best.

I’ve been wondering for a while now. Here’s what might stop me and possibly invest:

• Transparent volume data: ODL will help publish regular, audited reports on transaction volume. Please show me the receipts.

• A large bank record goes to: Not a pilot, not a memorandum of understanding, ‘strategic partnership’ is not going anywhere. I want a top-20 global bank saying, “We want to move billions of dollars through XRP.”

• Some defenses against the competition: Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are approaching the same cross-border payment market with various blockchain-based solutions. XRP needs a reason to win that battle beyond “we got here first”.