Is the price of Ripple (XRP) undervalued? Two reasons to consider (opinion)

XRP found support at the $2.00 mark in the last week of November and the first week of December. But Ripple bulls think it could have an addressable market as big as Bitcoin’s.

Ripple developed the XRP network and launched it in June 2012 to make it easy for major banks and corporations, and even governments, to send large payments internationally. However, by January 2018, it had become a popular altcoin among the crypto markets, and has remained so ever since.

Moreover, that price increase for XRP in 2017-2018 briefly made its founder, Chris Larsen, a cryptocurrency billionaire on paper.

Could XRP turn solid investors into millionaires by 2025 and 2026?

The short answer is ‘no’, but let me elaborate, because there are reasons to be optimistic.

The price of Bitcoin can be a good point of comparison. While BTC last traded at $2 in June 2011, it traded above $126,000 in a flashy 24-hour period on October 5, 2025. That was an increase of 63,000x in 14 years. In fact, every $1,000 invested in Bitcoin this early would now be worth $63 million.

So if the price of XRP continues on the same trajectory as Bitcoin, it would produce a similar outcome in 2039. Of course, to anyone in the know, this seems absolutely ridiculous, and it probably is. But a more realistic comparison is market capitalization.

Price increase of XRP versus BTC 2011 – 2025

For XRP’s market cap to reach the weight of BTC’s at its all-time high in October, it would only require a 20(x) or 1,900% increase from its December 14 value. That would bring XRP’s current market cap to Bitcoin’s two and a half trillion dollar market cap by the start of the fourth quarter this fall.

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Does XRP still have that much upside in the addressable market of its business model and in the valuation of the crypto market?

BTC did that in 2011.

Bitcoin was the first globally successful cryptocurrency and its hardcore minimalist design fulfilled the simplest banking function with the most demand. Meanwhile, it did this in a way to build its own Internet monetary currency using digital broadcasting techniques.

Furthermore, Bitcoin has incorporated a powerful economic flywheel to drain capital from the global financial system, acting as a capital sink.

Is XRP comparable?

Here are some ways this could happen. But let’s be honest: no one will become an XRP millionaire if they invest $1,000 today.

The XRP/SWIFT forecast

A report on Yahoo Finance was published in November touted that “XRP could capture 14% of SWIFT’s $150 trillion market by 2030.”

On-Demand Liquidity, Ripple’s automated payment service using XRP tokens, processed $1.3 trillion in the second quarter of 2025. That could be about $5.2 trillion annually. Instead of waiting days for SWIFT transfers to be processed, businesses only have to wait a few seconds for the XRP network to clear.

A fourfold increase in XRP volume for large cross-border payments over the second quarter pace would reach 14% of SWIFT market share by 2025. This could theoretically create additional demand for XRP tokens and increase their market value, but the market does not seem to see and appreciate the opportunity.

But as the global economy grows, so too does the number and size of such transfers. Meanwhile, Ripple is aggressively expanding its business to onboard customers making large cross-border payments.

They don’t just hang up a fully automated, very simple, but powerful low-bandwidth digital money network and let anyone who uses it use it.

XRPL: An Ethereum Value of XRP Market Cap?

Meanwhile, the XRP Ledger is developing the use case of the Ripple token as a programmable smart contract for secure and reliable transactions. It turns entire calculations using someone else’s computers over the network into a metered service for new forms of cloud computing.

In December, XRPL activity rose to record levels.

The rapidly growing popularity of this base layer blockchain for smart contracts opens up a whole new market, beyond XRP’s original purpose as a lightweight yet powerful, high-throughput payment service that leverages the capabilities of the Internet.

While XRP’s market cap was $122 billion as of December 14, Ethereum’s was $375 billion. At the peak of its market cap in September, Ethereum was above $555 billion.

If XRP proves to be an Ethereum killer, it could add about half a trillion dollars to its market cap through growth in its smart contract segment alone.