Market Data 
This article represents the opinion of the author and is not to be construed as financial advice.
Ripple’s XRP may be one of the most undervalued currencies in the blue-chip blockchain economy. That’s due to XRP’s legal success against the SEC and its product development.
Could XRP price be gearing up for a moonshot bull run sometime in Q3?
Very Bullish XRP Price Prediction
XRP price analyst Egrag Crypto raised the staggering specter of a $17 XRP price sometime in the near future if Ripple bulls beat key resistance at $1 and keep it running to XRP’s all-time high price of $3.50.
#XRP : The Bent Fork ($17 & Historical Support) – UPDATE:
🔍 June 2023: We introduced “The Bent Fork Chart.” Here’s the latest scoop:
🎯 New Top Target: $17
🚧 Key Resistance: $1 – both a structural barrier and psychological hurdle.
🏆 All-Time High (ATH): $3.5 – breaking… pic.twitter.com/H8IQ03tCYu— EGRAG CRYPTO (@egragcrypto) July 8, 2024
That’s very bullish, but not unheard of in crypto markets. Actually, similar performances are not uncommon at all in blockchain investing. They happen with shocking frequency in altcoin markets. Of course, it’s worth noting that they happen a lot less often with large-cap cryptocurrencies which boast total capitalizations in the billions, like XRP does.
If the Egrag XRP price prediction comes true, it would represent a 39.5x gain over Tuesday’s average Ripple price on exchanges.
Ripple has done these kind of numbers before. For example, when it reached its historic all-time high price of $3.50 in Jan. 2018, it skyrocketed there in under 60 days, from the $0.15 handle in Nov. 2017.
That represented a gain of over 23x the Nov. 2017 level for XRP in under two months.
Here are six important factors that markets are evaluating over the past weeks:
1. Ripple Sliding Into Home Base On SEC Suit?
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple Labs, its founder, Chris Larsen, and its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, in Q4 2020.
So the SEC Ripple lawsuit has been raging for years, but finally showed signs of settling last summer when a sweeping series of legal wins came one after another until the end of last year.
Ripple Labs could finally resolve the years-long SEC lawsuit soon.
A positive or even less-damaging resolution could finally remove the overhang that XRP has been under for the past years and help it perform well, especially in bullish market conditions.
2. XRP Ledger (XRPL) Development
What the market doesn’t know yet, telling by the XRP price performance against competitors like Solana, is that this cryptocurrency for banks is about to break out in the DeFi space with its smart contract issuance layer, XRP ledger.
According to a recent X post by a16z-backed blockchain developer group EasyA app founder Dominic Kwok, 134,000 developers are learning about Ledger on his company’s app. Talk about an XRP army.
Celebrating 134,000 devs learning about the #XRP Ledger on @easya_app 🤳📱
Amazing dinner with @Ripple’s very own gigabrain @xrplebeian last night during #ETHCC.
Fun fact: this restaurant is a UNESCO world heritage site! 😮 pic.twitter.com/hGp1BGqxGv
— Dom | EasyA 🤳📱 (@dom_kwok) July 9, 2024
Meanwhile, X crypto analyst CryptoGeek reported, “The XRP Ledger is expected to manage $30 to $50 trillion by 2025, with transactions likely shifting to the CTF Token, the primary DeFi token on the #XRPL.”
While those figures may seem astonishing, the SWIFT international payments system used by financial institutions like those Ripple serves processes some $5 trillion a day in transaction volume.
3. Ripple Interoperability With Ethereum
💥 @Ripple & @EvmosOrg have joined forces to build an XRP Ledger EVM sidechain!
The sidechain will be built with #evmOS – a production-ready modular solution that leverages Cosmos SDK, IBC, and CometBFT to bring EVM compatibility to Web3 businesses.
XRPL future is #interchain pic.twitter.com/VEOO8dawlh
— Cosmos – The Interchain ⚛️ (@cosmos) May 14, 2024
One very exciting development for Ripple, which could have a positive impact on XRP price, is growing interoperability with Ether. That’s because Ethereum is the current DeFi leader in Web3. Meanwhile, there’s an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)/XRP Ledger side-chain incoming!
In May, interchain protocol Cosmos announced that Ripple and Ethereum Cosmos developer evmOS are partnering “to build an XRP Ledger EVM sidechain!”
“The sidechain will be built with evmOS – a production-ready modular solution that leverages Cosmos SDK, IBC, and CometBFT to bring EVM compatibility to Web3 businesses,” Cosmos added.
That might be bullish for XRP price because the easier it is to use and spend your Ether to get service from an XRPL Dapp (decentralized application) or vice versa— the easier it is to spend your XRP tokens directly to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and pay for service— the more value your ETH and XRP tokens have on the market.
4. XRP International Growth
Moreover, XRP Ledger has made big strides in Korea and Japan this month.
Korea’s only licensed VASP (virtual asset service provider) recently announced integrations with XRP Ledger. According to a June 27 report that appeared on Investing.com:
“Infinite Block, the only South Korean crypto firm to secure a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license until now, has announced support for XRP Ledger (XRPL), the open-source, public blockchain designed by American fintech firm Ripple.”
Korea and Japan are among the most digitally engaged and conscious nations in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Korean demand for cryptocurrencies has proven formidably insatiable. Higher fees than most places and government import controls have not been able to slow the East Asian country’s roll in Web3 adoption.
The Infinite Block partnership came as a result of Ripple Labs’ aggressive global expansion efforts. Earlier in June, Ripple announced the launch of its XRPL Japan and Korea Fund, to “provide support for a range of robust initiatives to foster innovation on the XRP Ledger in both countries.”
“The launch of this fund is a testament to Ripple’s strong belief in the potential of Japan and Korea as pivotal regional hubs for blockchain innovation,” Ripple Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Emi Yoshikawa said in a press release.
5. XRP User Activity Spikes to 5-Month High
Ripple network transaction volume on XRPL saw a massive spike earlier this month to levels unseen since February, according to on-chain data.
Meanwhile, the number of whales or addresses holding large amounts of XRP (1 million or more) has grown markedly in 2024.
According to data from blockchain intelligence firm Santiment, that figure surged past 2,000 to 2,043 by July 4, a 4.3% increase in XRP millionaires for the year so far.
6. Ripple IPO Next?
After buttoning up this SEC lawsuit, an IPO would likely chum up the waters for more whale-sized inflows to boost XRP price.
Just don’t expect it to happen on Wall Street, given that XRP is primarily a cryptocurrency for international payments among major financial institutions.
That’s especially so after the long, drawn-out hostile treatment the SEC has given Ripple Labs. The company’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, said in January and again last month that Ripple is actively exploring how to go public and issue shares in Ripple Labs to be traded on the international stock market.
Garlinghouse confirms that #Ripple is interested in going public, but they will probably carry out their IPO outside of the U.S. Right now, it doesn’t make sense as long as Gary Gensler is still Chair of the SEC.
Once Ripple goes public, the price of XRP will skyrocket! 🚀🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/XCNvVfLP2o
— Collin Brown (@CollinBrownXRP) June 2, 2024
