XRP has been a top altcoin for over 10 years, but the past few years haven’t been easy for the token. A lingering lawsuit with the US regulator has kept investors wary, resulting in long-term price underperformance.
With the election of Donald Trump and wholesale changes at the SEC though, the winds of change might be blowing in XRP’s favour.
XRP’s price has fluctuated at levels below $1 in recent years. Trump’s return to power saw XRP’s price jump by over 500% from November 2024 to January 2025. It broke the $3 resistance level for the first time in seven years (It’s all-time-high of $3.40 was reached in 2018).
Renewed bullish sentiment around XRP has many wondering, how high can XRP’s price soar by 2030?
XRP price performance over the past year, Source: CoinGecko.
XRP’s post-lawsuit performance
While XRP and its associated blockchain is decentralised, both XRP and XRPL underpin commercial solutions offered by the company behind the tech, Ripple Labs. The main one is the Ripple Payment Network, which is already used by a number of banks and other companies to handle billions of cross-border payments.
As the native token of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), XRP is key to enabling the cheap and fast settlement transactions that make Ripple Payments useful.
But adoption, and XRP’s price, hasn’t taken off like many hoped. Given the primary use case is aimed at traditional financial firms, XRP has been stymied by a lack of regulatory clarity. And then Ripple faced a protracted legal case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — which claimed XRP was an unregistered security.
Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 changed the regulatory environment and lifted market sentiment, seeing XRP’s price surge above $3. Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in January that Ripple had “signed more US deals in the last six weeks of 2024 (since the election) than the previous six MONTHS.”
The SEC saw a change in leadership, and by March 2025 the case against XRP had been dropped. It marked the end of a legal tousle that had been running for five years and cost Ripple more than $150 million. In the immediate aftermath, XRP’s price rose by 15%.
Although it has been trading below $3 since February, various analysts had been forecasting the XRP’s price could top out at anywhere between $6 to $11 this year.
But the ‘Trump effect’ didn’t remain beneficial for long. Widespread financial market slumps caused by the President’s chaotic approach to tariffs also hit crypto markets in April. Nearly all top tokens experienced a correction: XRP plunged by almost 45% compared to its January high, trading below $2.
What’s next in 2025 and beyond for XRP’s price?
With macroeconomic conditions shaky, there’s uncertainty around how crypto markets and XRP’s price will perform in 2025 and out to 2030.
Some positives on the horizon that could lead to XRP price action include:
- Increased Ripple growth and institutional adoption of XRP and RLUSD.
- The launch of XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs), depending on their uptake.
- The next Bitcoin halving in 2028 and the extent of any future bull runs.
- The extent to which crypto markets consolidate and become more steady.
Ripple’s success doesn’t automatically translate to price action for XRP, but it should increase demand for XRP relative to supply over time. Ripple is well-positioned to attract more business customers due to factors like:
- Demand for stablecoins. The rapid adoption of the stablecoin Ripple launched in December 2024 — Ripple USD (RLUSD) — bodes well. In just over three months, RLUSD is close to reaching a $300 million market cap and has seen over $10 billion in trading volume.
- Demand for tokenisation. As a proven intermediary asset, the XRP blockchain holds appeal for a growing number of institutions looking to tokenise real world assets, like real estate, or use the power of blockchain to manage traditional finance vehicles like tokenised funds.
- Increased regulatory certainty. Legislation and policy is currently progressing, in the US and globally, that will provide clarity around stablecoin use and how firms can develop digital asset offerings. For instance, the recent rescinding of the SEC’s SAB 121 rule could remove compliance hurdles for US banks — a key Ripple target.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas put the chances of an spot XRP ETF being approved in 2025 at 65%.
However, JP Morgan analysts argued the demand for altcoin ETFs isn’t great. “We don’t see investor interest or demand great enough to make these future altcoin ETP launches meaningful for the cryptocurrency ecosystem,” the bank said in January.
Digital exchange OKX’s President Hong Fang recently warned that centralised custody risks posed by crypto ETFs could shift the narrative to self-custody in 2025. “The tension between adoption and concentration risk will come under a spotlight,” she said.
Crypto ETF approval odds in 2025. Source: Bloomberg analysts.
The next five years could see an acceleration of the maturation of crypto markets, with investors turning to quality projects over speculative assets — which points to upside potential for a coin with real utility like XRP. A recent series of high-profile memecoin rug-pulls in early 2025, such as the $4.4 billion $LIBRA collapse, has seen sentiment begin to sour on memecoins.
A report from Kaiko Research found that the recent Bitcoin rally following Donald Trump’s win didn’t spark the same kind of widespread altcoin season we’ve come to expect. Large cap alts like XRP took the lion’s share of investor money — in fact, 64% of the total trading volume was concentrated in the top 10 altcoins.
“This shrinking pool of market leaders reflects a shift from retail-driven speculation to institutional capital favoring a concentrated set of high-liquidity assets,” the report stated.
Can XRP’s price reach $20 by 2030?
Some predict the price of XRP could climb as high as $40 by 2030, with an average value of around $20. What’s the basis for this exceptional lift in performance?
Ultimately it comes down to institutional interest in the token as a reliable, highly liquid asset.
EY research from 2023, based on a survey of over 250 institutions, found that over 50% were long-term believers in crypto. Sixty percent were allocating more than 1% of their portfolio to digital assets, and almost 70% expected to increase their allocations by 2025.
Key barriers to a greater allocation? Regulatory uncertainty, trusted firms to partner with, and safe custody options.
With its legal woes in the rear view mirror, XRP and Ripple ticks all the boxes for cautious institutional investors looking to up their allocations — like hedge funds, financial management firms, retirement/pension funds, insurance companies. XRP poses an attractive option because:
- As one of the top coins by market cap, XRP offers high liquidity to account for high-volume trading by large investors.
- Regulated XRP ETFs that are likely to emerge will overcome uncertainty for institutions with strong risk management practices.
And the more institutional money that flows into XRP, the more it will seem like a ‘safe bet’ in the same way that Bitcoin’s volatility has reduced. Which should, in turn, make XRP even more attractive to investors looking to hold long-term.
But a consistently rising price isn’t a sure thing, and retail investors still have an influence. And what moves crypto markets right now is still mostly sentiment, hype, fear and greed.
- If Ripple expands to become a global leader in blockchain-based international payments and the tokenised economy, a price target of $10-$20 seems plausible.
- If volatility continues to buffet cryptocurrency prices, it makes the odds of XRP’s price steadily moving towards values like $100, $500 or $1000 dollars seem slim.
Should you invest in XRP?
There have been plenty of critics of XRP over the years who have written it off as a ‘stablecoin’ or a dead coin — saying there’s no signs it will ever significantly rise in value.
But it’s clearly far from dead. As respected angel investor Armando Pantoja highlighted in April 2025, thousands of other projects that once joined XRP a decade ago in the top ten cryptos by market cap have since disappeared. “Of the three or four you can say did better than XRP over the last six months, there’s at least 10,000 coins that failed completely,” he said.
Staying power and a large market capitalisation doesn’t tell us whether demand for XRP will grow, leading to upwards price momentum. But if you believe in XRP’s potential to rise, investing now could put you in a strong position.
