While the wider cryptocurrency market is having to contend with high volatility and widespread uncertainty, XRP appears to be thriving. With the SEC dropping its long-standing appeal against Ripple, could it finally live up to its potential?
The Securities and Exchange Commission first opened its lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020 before XRP reached a low of $0.16 on January 2, 2021. By January 18, 2025, XRP was trading at $2.63, and with the SEC ending its interest in the coin, there’s plenty of optimism for Ripple to rally higher.
“Today marks a historic victory—for Ripple, our employees and customers, and for the entire crypto industry,” said Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO in a statement. “After more than four years of litigation, the SEC will drop its appeal against Ripple, concluding the SEC’s 4+ year long lawsuit. This is subject to Commission vote and approval.”
Much has been made of Ripple’s impressive technical attributes. Notably, its Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm, which validates transactions through designated servers until they reach a supermajority agreement.
It’s this algorithm that’s helped to make Ripple far more functional than other major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and has paved the way for transactions to be processed in just three to five seconds while handling up to 1,500 transactions per second.
Crucially, it’s this high-speed blockchain network that gives Ripple plenty of potential use cases as cryptocurrency continues its emergence into mainstream adoption.
But could removing the shackles of SEC scrutiny just be the beginning of Ripple’s journey? Let’s take a deeper look at the coin’s prospects for 2025 and beyond:
Functionality is Ripple’s USP
Not many cryptocurrencies that were launched in 2012 possess blockchains that are flexible enough to transform the fintech landscape, but Ripple is an excellent asset when it comes to fast cross-border payments.
When institutions use Ripple to make a payment overseas, XRP acts as a bridge currency to optimize currency transfers in a fast and low-cost manner. Whether this means performing a direct currency exchange or using XRP as an intermediary, the flexibility Ripple provides can actively help reduce transaction costs without the need for appointing middlemen to handle the task.
Many forecasters suggest that cryptocurrency will become increasingly integrated into mainstream usage thanks to more regulatory clarity from the SEC’s new acting director Mark Uyeda, Ripple could be one of the key beneficiaries of the many functional cryptocurrencies throughout the ecosystem.
In fact, LMAX Group recently incorporated XRP into its institutional trading infrastructure, intending to offer institutions better access to highly liquid assets throughout markets.
LMAX, which provides institutional execution venues for forex and digital assets trading, also acquired FX HedgePool, an institutional swaps matching service, and appears to have highlighted Ripple as an effective resource for boosting efficiency.
“Ripple’s utility in lowering transaction costs for international payments makes it a potential leader in financial systems and fintech,” explains Maxim Manturov, head of investment advice at Freedom24. “If Ripple’s global partnerships continue to expand, the price of XRP could reach $5-$8.”
Growth Isn’t Assured
Despite a strong start to 2025 and a flow of good news, XRP is showing signs of strain amid more widespread bearish market sentiment.
Worryingly, some cryptocurrency analysts believe that market pressures could push Ripple below $2 if support barriers are retested amid an increasingly volatile outlook for crypto.
One of the challenges of crypto’s emergence into mainstream adoption is that the landscape is more vulnerable to Wall Street price movements, and wider macroeconomic pressures could stunt XRP’s growth in 2025 as investment banks like Goldman Sachs cut their S&P 500 forecasts for the year ahead.
It’s also worth looking at a decline in XRP funding rates, which have been mostly negative in recent weeks as traders open short positions following more widespread crypto market challenges.
Funding rates refer to the periodic payments between traders holding long and short positions to keep the price of perpetual futures contracts linked to the underlying asset they’re tracking.
However, a cause for optimism is that XRP’s bearish sentiment of late is far less pronounced than the likes of other popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), indicating that an upturn in sentiment could see Ripple outperform the wider market.
Adoption Ahead
Whether Ripple goes parabolic in 2025 or not will likely depend more on the state of the wider economic outlook in the United States and beyond. However, evidence of the incorporation of cryptocurrencies into the mainstream financial sector is likely to be a catalyst for growth for functional assets like XRP.
Crypto’s push towards the mainstream will transform the industry and can help to provide more exposure to its brightest projects. In terms of payment efficiency, an emboldened Ripple that’s free from the SEC’s shackles could form a formidable force.
The future is difficult to predict amid wider crypto market volatility, but it’s difficult to think of a more exciting prospect in the cryptocurrency space right now than a resurgent Ripple.
