What Will Help the Price of Ripple (XRP)?

Ripple (XRP)–Trading at 1.23 USD, XRP has reached its relative lowest price point in recent months. While the entire cryptomarket struggles to bounceback from the January fall, Ripple has taken a particular beating, dropping from a peak of near four dollars at the beginning of the month to present levels.

Here are a few reasons to stay bullish on the long-term potential of Ripple, and what could help realign the price of XRP with expectations of value:

More Partnerships with Ripple

The MoneyGram announcement was the single biggest piece of news cryptocurrency has had within the last year. Despite the FUD of potential government bans, the warring factions of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and Charlie Lee’s selloff from Litecoin, MoneyGram is the largest announcement and real world partnership any currency has managed to establish to this point. Not only does it represent real world adoption from the industry Ripple is targeting–i.e. Banks and financial service companies–but the pilot program will specifically be using XRP as apart of the transactions. This alleviates two fears Ripple holders and would-be investors have had for years:

1. Will banks only use Ripple technology and neglect the XRP token, thereby making the currency worthless to the average investor, at least in terms of adoption that the industry currently expects (the massive purchasing power of banks)?
2. Does XRP offer intrinsic value? There are several coins on the rise that have an overlay of technology to make the currency more useful than just for transacting (looking at you, Ethereum and Tron). XRP has been built from the ground up to transfer money, but does that function limit its value in the situation where banks neglect XRP adoption?

We know that Ripple has one of the cheapest transaction fees (0.00001 XRP or put another way, fractions of a penny until the price of XRP eclipses 1000 USD per coin), and fastest transaction times, making it the current favorite currency for any digital, blockchain based transaction. More importantly, Ripple has proven to scale–and was designed from the beginning for large transaction volumes–which eradicates the fear of congestion that Ethereum and Bitcoin experienced at their peak. What’s more, Ripple is changing hands at a rate unprecedented in the current market, posting five times the transaction volume of Bitcoin and accounting for nearly half of the total volume of transactions in a 24 hour period.

Timing to Benefit XRP

People are buying, selling and sending Ripple, we just have yet to see the appreciation in price as expected by the level of excitement. More partnerships, even if they fail to push the price such as what happened with MoneyGram, creates a pressure-cooker effect for the price of XRP. We know there are likely two money-transfer firms waiting to announce their partnership with XRP, based off comments made by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. It’s probably better for Ripple investors that all three companies were not announced at the same time, given the bear market conditions and other FUD-inducing anomalies, such as the CoinMarketCap debacle, and the South Korean fake-news ban (which, unsurprisingly, is now being met with allegations of insider trading), that have occurred this past month.

If the price of XRP makes a bullish turn, whether through an upswing in the crypto-market or the impact of new exchange listings such Coinsquare in February (and possibly Coinbase), then XRP could go exponential again off the back of well-timed partnerships. Either way, announcements such as MoneyGram, the looming two unannounced money transfer firms, and the more recent XRapid partnerships with IDT Corporation and MercuryFX, all get baked into the price even if it fails to move it. If you are a hedge fund investor or average-joe looking for high upside with mitigated risk, Ripple becomes an even more attractive proposition.

Buy the Dip

For the people simply trying to invest in undervalued projects, XRP is the king of the cryptocurrency industry. There may be other coins with more room to moon in price, but also the very real possibility of stagnating for years or folding all together. At this point it seems clear: Ripple is not going away. January’s all time high of 3.80 USD will likely form the floor of XRP’s next exponential price jump. A look at historical charts reveals that XRP has long exhibited this boom-and-bust cycle of valuation. Despite positive press, real-world partnerships and further adoption, XRP’s price stays relatively stable, even in slight decline, before racing to its next peak. Savvy investors, in particular those looking to mitigate the risk of their investment, use this down-time to line their portfolio with cheap XRP before the price takes off. The rest of the market, specifically the myopic-breed of crypto investors looking to get rich overnight, see Ripple as a coin in decline and steer away.

But if you pay attention to the news, the partnerships, the growing integration and adoption of XRP–and we are talking notably about using the actual coin XRP, not just the technology behind Ripple–it becomes hard to ignore just how undervalued and built-to-succeed Ripple is. There are a lot of cryptocurrencies to sort through, exciting in both technology and the profit to be made, but few can boast the same impact that Ripple is having upon the real world. If you like crypto for it’s libertarian utility and continue to write off XRP as a tool for the banks, continue at your own risk. Ripple, at this point, seems more likely to change the world in terms of service implementation than any other currency. If you are in crypto to be an early adopter–and these are still the early days–there is no currency primed to succeed like XRP.