By Gaurav S. Iyer, IFC

Published: February 9, 2018

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Gaurav S. Iyer, IFC
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Ripple Price Prediction: XRP Shrugs Off Pessimism to Advance 11%

rippleRipple News Update

The last two months have been an absolute rollercoaster for Ripple investors. December brought jaw-dropping returns, making XRP the best-performing digital asset of 2017; then January blues made it the worst-hit crypto of 2018.

Now, finally, a measure of calm is returning to markets.

With this revival of sanity, fundamentals are back in the driver’s seat. This is good news for XRP prices, given the company’s fountain of achievements. Just look at what the company managed to accomplish in the last month:

  • Partnerships with MoneyGram, IDT, and Mercury FX. Supplying “xRapid” solutions to three of the top five international payments companies is a big deal. It is especially important because investors were starting to doubt if XRP would actually be used to settle transactions.
  • SBI built a virtual currencies exchange around XRP. As Ripple’s bodyguard in Asia’s capital markets, I expected SBI to facilitate XRP adoption. However, I did not expect them to invest the time and resources to build an exchange, much less one that uses XRP as the bridge from fiat to cryptos.
  • Ripple opens a payments corridor to China. Few countries have been as hostile to cryptocurrencies as China, yet the country allowed Ripple to open a payments corridor for LianLian Yintong Electronic Payment Co., Ltd., a major financial firm based in Hong Kong. This shows that Ripple’s global reach is greater than almost every other crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum included.

So long as investors value XRP prices based on fundamentals, the sky is the limit. I found it particularly encouraging that Ripple prices surged 10.6% against the U.S. dollar because it suggests that investors are indeed reverting to a fundamentals-based approach.

Ripple (XRP) Price Chart

ripple price chart for 9 feb

The XRP to USD exchange rate is currently $0.904210.

Analyst Take

There’s a silver lining to the XRP price rally. Namely, that Bitcoin prices remained stuck in the mud. In other words, Ripple was not riding Bitcoin’s coattails to higher prices. It got there all by itself.

For all these reasons and more, we maintain our $10.00 Ripple price prediction for 2018.