Is XRP really going to zero, or is the market missing something big?

XRP has been stuck in the same price range for what feels like forever. It’s bled down from its 2025 highs, social media is full of “XRP is going to zero” takes, and many holders are exhausted. But when you look past the red candles and frustration, the on-chain data and institutional activity tell a very different story.

Why so many people think XRP is dead

The bearish case for XRP isn’t made up. The token briefly traded above $3 in 2025 and then gave almost everything back, drifting back toward the same levels it started from. For anyone who bought near the top, that’s painful.

On top of that, Ripple still controls a large portion of the XRP supply. Tokens are regularly unlocked from escrow, and the market feels that extra sell pressure. Some analysts argue they’d rather own equity in Ripple, the company, than XRP itself. From their perspective, Ripple captures the value, while XRP is just the tool.

Put all of that together in a broader crypto bear market, and it’s easy to see why people say XRP will never see $10, let alone $100.

What the bear case misses: real-world assets on the XRP Ledger

While the price has been stuck under roughly $1.20, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) has quietly become a major home for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). This is where the story starts to diverge from the doom narrative.

Ripple has partnered with Archax, a UK-regulated digital asset exchange, to bring traditional financial instruments like U.S. Treasuries and money market funds on-chain. These aren’t speculative meme coins – they’re core pieces of the global financial system being represented on the same ledger that XRP runs on.

Today, the XRP Ledger hosts around $3.6 billion in tokenized real-world assets. For comparison, Stellar – which is often mentioned in the same breath as XRP – has about $79 million in similar assets. That’s a massive gap in committed value sitting on-chain.

Those assets don’t appear on a price chart, but they matter. They signal that institutions are already using XRPL as infrastructure, even if retail sentiment is still in the gutter.

AI, payments, and the next wave of XRPL tools

It’s not just tokenization. The tooling around XRP is evolving as well, especially at the intersection of AI and payments.

Ripple recently launched an XRP Ledger AI starter kit – a curated set of tools that lets developers build AI-powered payment applications on XRPL. Think AI agents that can initiate, route, and manage payments on-chain without human intervention.

That kind of infrastructure is aimed at the next generation of financial applications, not just speculative trading. And because it’s being discussed on mainstream business media, it’s reaching an audience far beyond the usual crypto crowd.

If you’re interested in where AI and crypto overlap more broadly, it’s worth comparing this to how only a handful of AI-focused projects are positioned to benefit from real usage, as explored in this breakdown of which AI cryptos are actually set up to go vertical.

Institutional money keeps flowing into XRP

Despite all the negativity online, regulated XRP products are quietly attracting serious capital.

XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen around $1.4 billion in cumulative net inflows. That means week after week, more money is entering these products than leaving, even as XRP’s price chops sideways in what looks like a long accumulation phase.

Standard Chartered, a major global bank, has modeled potential inflows of $4–8 billion into XRP ETFs if the U.S. Clarity Act passes. For a single asset at this price level, those are big numbers. They suggest that large institutions are planning for a future where XRP plays a defined role in regulated markets.

When banks run scenarios like that, they’re not thinking in terms of crypto Twitter sentiment. They’re looking at liquidity, regulatory trajectory, and how XRPL can plug into existing financial rails.

The bigger picture: crypto is still tiny next to legacy markets

Part of the disconnect comes from how small crypto still is compared to traditional finance. It feels big from the inside, but in macro terms it’s barely a rounding error.

Here’s some perspective:

• SpaceX is now valued around $2.8 trillion.
• The entire crypto market is roughly $2 trillion – less than one company.
• The global stock market is over $130 trillion.
• The global bond market is around $140 trillion.
• Gold alone sits at about $29 trillion.

Crypto hasn’t even scratched the surface of global capital. That’s why legacy firms are starting to build bridges between traditional markets and digital assets.

Franklin Templeton, which manages about $1.5 trillion, recently filed for hybrid ETFs that convert stock dividends into crypto exposure. That’s a concrete example of the walls between old and new finance coming down.

In that kind of world, assets with live infrastructure, regulatory progress, and real-world usage – like XRPL’s tokenization and payments stack – are positioned to benefit early when capital starts to rotate in size.

From speculation to policy: governments are paying attention

Another shift that doesn’t show up in daily price action is the move from pure speculation to actual policy discussion.

In the U.S., sitting senators are openly talking about digital assets as tools for fiscal strategy. One senator recently argued that if the U.S. held one-fifth of the world’s Bitcoin for 20 years, it could cut the national debt by a third to a half, depending on Bitcoin’s growth. The same argument framed Bitcoin as a strategic store of value that could help support the dollar’s reserve currency status.

Whether you agree with that thesis or not, it shows how far the conversation has come. Crypto is no longer just about trading; it’s entering the realm of national strategy. XRP, with its focus on payments and settlement, sits right in the infrastructure layer that such strategies could eventually depend on.

“I’d rather own Ripple than XRP” – the common pushback

A common criticism you’ll hear from sophisticated investors is that they’d prefer to own shares of Ripple rather than XRP. The logic is simple: Ripple is a company with equity, revenue, and clients; XRP is a token whose value capture isn’t always obvious.

But that view can miss how the XRP Ledger actually works. XRP is the native asset that provides liquidity between different fiat currencies and tokens on XRPL. When banks or payment providers use XRP as a bridge asset, they’re tapping into XRP’s liquidity to move value in seconds, without pre-funding accounts around the world.

There’s already deep liquidity between XRP and major currencies like USD and GBP. That’s what enables near-instant settlement. The end user never sees XRP – they just see faster, cheaper payments – but XRP is doing the work under the hood.

So while it’s fair to say Ripple equity has value, it’s also true that XRP is the asset that powers the settlement layer. If that layer continues to grow, it’s hard to argue that the token is irrelevant.

What’s actually live today: real customers, real payments

Years ago, Ripple’s CEO described XRP on CNN as a digital asset used to unlock trapped capital in the banking system. Instead of banks pre-funding accounts in foreign currencies, they could use XRP as a real-time bridge, freeing up dormant capital and settling payments in seconds.

At the time, that sounded like a bold vision. Today, much of it is live:

• Ripple works with over 300 financial institutions globally.
• Companies like SBI Remit in Japan have been running cross-border payments using XRP for years.
• XRPL is handling tokenized assets, AI-enabled payment experiments, and institutional-grade tools.

In other words, the “real use case for real customers” pitch isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s in production.

The Clarity Act and why regulation matters for XRP

A lot of the institutional scenario-planning around XRP hinges on one key piece of U.S. legislation: the Clarity Act.

This bill is designed to create a clearer regulatory framework for digital asset markets. It aims to add consumer protections, give law enforcement better tools, and fill the gaps that currently leave many tokens in a gray area.

There’s political momentum behind it, and reports suggest that efforts to slow it down from the banking sector have met resistance at high levels. The timeline is uncertain – it could pass this summer or later – but the direction of travel is important. Clear rules tend to unlock bigger pools of capital, especially from institutions that can’t touch assets stuck in regulatory limbo.

That’s why Standard Chartered’s $4–8 billion ETF inflow projection is tied to the Clarity Act. If the bill passes, XRP’s regulatory overhang could lift, and the market may start to reprice the asset based on its actual usage and infrastructure.

XRP’s chart: long accumulation, rising utility

Technically, XRP has been in a multi-year accumulation range. On higher timeframes like the weekly and monthly charts, it’s printing higher lows while volume gradually rises alongside on-chain activity and real-world usage.

This kind of structure lines up with the classic Wyckoff accumulation schematic: a long period of sideways price action, shrinking volatility, and smart money quietly building positions while retail loses interest or capitulates.

The longer this kind of consolidation lasts, the more powerful the eventual breakout can be on a macro scale – assuming the fundamentals keep improving. So far, the fundamentals (tokenization, institutional tools, regulatory progress) are moving in the right direction, even if the price hasn’t followed yet.

If you want a deeper dive into this “last shakeout before adoption” idea, it’s worth reading this analysis of whether XRP dropping under $1 is actually a final shakeout.

Positioning through the pain: holding XRP while your capital works

None of this changes the reality that XRP could still trend sideways or even drop another 20–50% in a tough market. Long consolidations test patience, and opportunity cost is real.

One way some investors approach this is by separating their long-term conviction from their short-term capital needs. That can mean:

• Keeping a core XRP position for the long-term thesis around payments, tokenization, and regulation.
• Actively deploying the rest of the portfolio into assets or strategies that are moving now, instead of letting everything sit idle.
• Exploring ways to earn yield on idle crypto (with a clear understanding of the risks) so you’re not just waiting for XRP’s next move.

This way, if XRP finally breaks out after the Clarity Act or a major adoption milestone, you’re still positioned to benefit. But you’re not spending months or years watching your entire portfolio stagnate while other parts of the market offer opportunities.

So, is XRP really going to zero?

When you put all the pieces together – billions in tokenized assets on XRPL, AI-powered payment tools, steady ETF inflows, major banks modeling multi-billion dollar demand, regulatory progress, and live usage by hundreds of financial institutions – the “XRP is going to zero” narrative looks disconnected from reality.

That doesn’t mean XRP is guaranteed to hit specific price targets or timelines. Markets can stay irrational longer than anyone expects, and regulation can move slower than the hype. But the data under the surface suggests that something much bigger is being built than what the current price reflects.

The real question isn’t whether XRP is going to zero. It’s whether the market will eventually reprice XRP to match the infrastructure and adoption that’s quietly stacking up – and how you choose to position yourself if and when that happens.