The price of XRP rose to a record high on Thursday, soaring past a seven-year-old milestone amid broader momentum for altcoins in the cryptocurrency market.
The Ripple Labs-linked coin was recently changing hands around $3.41, rising more than 36% over the past week, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The previous record was $3.40, set all the way back in January 2018.
Ethereum and Solana had also outperformed Bitcoin’s weekly 5.5% rise, meanwhile jumping 21% and 8%, respectively.
The recent surge in XRP’s price has been enough for it to supplant Tether’s USDT as the third-largest digital asset by market capitalization. On Thursday, XRP’s total value stood above $200 billion, compared to the industry-leading stablecoin’s $160 billion footprint.
XRP’s new all-time high underscores investors’ belief in Ripple’s vision for “a regulatory-compliant blockchain for institutions,” Matt Kreiser, a research analyst at crypto analytics platform Messari, told Decrypt. “It’s a validation of everything they’ve been doing and working towards.”
Created alongside XRP Ledger in 2012, XRP has been used to facilitate cross-border and cross-currency payments for longer than much of the cryptocurrency industry has existed. XRP previously peaked in 2018 near the height of the ICO boom, when Wall Street adoption was viewed as a far-off hope among many market participants.
But since then, Ripple—whose founders created XRP—has been able to help onboard hundreds of financial institutions to XRP Ledger, from behemoths like Bank of America to smaller banks internationally.
Ripple’s products are designed to let firms move money more efficiently than traditional banking rails, with higher speeds and lower costs. The company also debuted a stablecoin last year called Ripple USD, which has become a $517 million product in eight months.
The company’s efforts to make XRP Ledger a go-to destination for issuing representatives of real-world assets on-chain, also known as tokenization, are positive, investment bank Standard Chartered’s Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick wrote in April.
XRP serves a similar function to stablecoins, and as more transactions move on-chain, that should benefit XRP Ledger’s throughput, Kendrick noted. The debut of a spot XRP ETF in the U.S. could also create newfound demand for the asset, he added.
On Thursday, he confirmed to Decrypt that his year-end price target of $5.50 for XRP still stands, as well as high belief that XRP will hit $12.25 within the next decade.
With a new all-time high mark in the books, Myriad users believe that XRP will continue to rise to $3.50, giving that an 85% chance of being its next move rather than a plunge back down to $2.00. (Disclosure: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN.)
Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against Ripple has yet to officially wind down, the regulator has effectively abandoned its lawsuit against the company for allegedly conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering via XRP.
Last month, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on X that Ripple was dropping its cross-appeal against the SEC, which had also moved to appeal the judge’s ruling. It effectively marked the end of the four-year legal battle, he said.
“We’re closing this chapter once and for all, and focusing on what’s most important—building the internet of value,” he said. “Lock in.”
