The Uncomfortable Truth About XRP That Shows How High Price Can Actually Go

[Ben Graham]

The uncomfortable truth about XRP is that most people may be valuing it through the wrong lens. This point of view was made by commentator BarriC, who put forward a claim familiar among XRP enthusiasts: The altcoin was never designed to be a retail trade. 

In a recent post on X, he noted that the asset was built to move institutional value, and once financial infrastructure actually requires XRP, the price will not climb slowly. Instead, it will reprice to levels the system demands.

XRP As Infrastructure, Not A Trade

BarriC’s outlook on XRP’s price action is based on the idea that XRP’s purpose has been misunderstood. From the beginning, the XRP Ledger was structured to facilitate high-speed settlement, cross-border liquidity, and asset tokenization, where people can be their own bank and no middlemen tax their transactions. XRPL creators like David Schwartz have always pointed to these functionalities as the reason why the XRP Ledger is different. 

XRP is the bridge asset within that XRPL ecosystem. Through services built by Ripple, XRP has been positioned as a tool for on-demand liquidity between currencies and financial institutions. The reason offered by BarriC is that if banks and payment providers depend on it to settle value efficiently, demand would be based on usage, not just speculative trading like an average cryptocurrency.

Under that framework, XRP’s valuation would no longer be based on retail buying pressure. It would reflect how much capital needs to flow through the network.

How High Can The Price Actually Go?

The most interesting part of BarriC’s statement is how much necessity pricing will affect the token’s price. The outlook is that when the token finally becomes required infrastructure, it does not grind higher step by step like a meme-based rally. Instead, it is going to reprice abruptly. That is why he dismisses price anchors such as $2 or even the three-digit mark at $100. 

If the necessity pricing were to happen, the price action is going to look more like $1,000 per XRP, $10,000 per XRP, or $50,000 per XRP. However, BarriC acknowledged that projections of $1,000 to $50,000 sound unrealistic under today’s conditions. This is especially true, considering the implied market cap if the altcoin were to trade at those predicted price levels.

At the time of writing, XRP is trading within normal market structures and is currently trading at $1.37, up by 2.7% in the past 24 hours. Institutional usage of the altcoin is still limited compared to global payment volumes. However, recent moves by Ripple are increasingly seeing XRP becoming entrenched in the niche of global payments.

It is currently unclear which path this price repricing will take, as there is no historical precedent in crypto markets for an asset transitioning into deeply embedded global payments settlement infrastructure. Therefore, projections from BarriC and other bullish XRP proponents are only forward-looking predictions.