Bullish XRP predictions are becoming more and more common — is there any truth in them? | Source: CCN.
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Key Takeaways
XRPL is preparing for the quantum computing era.
XRPL’s engineering head sees growing institutional demand beyond payments.
Analyst says a $500 XRP price remains unrealistic.
RippleX’s Head of Engineering, Ayo Akinyele, said the XRP Ledger is actively preparing for the arrival of quantum computing threats.
The comments come as investors continue to debate XRP’s long-term price potential, including recurring predictions that the token could eventually reach $500.
Such forecasts have been challenged by crypto analyst Sam Daodu, who argued that the framework needed for a $500 XRP price is unlikely.
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Speaking on the Thinking Crypto podcast, Akinyele said Ripple and the broader XRPL community have been developing a strategy to ensure the network remains secure in a future in which quantum computers could break today’s encryption standards.
“We’ve been working on quantum resistance for a little while,” Akinyele said.
He added that Ripple’s crypto team, XRPL Foundation developers and academic researchers began exploring post-quantum cryptography standards as early as 2024 and 2025.
Akinyele referenced research from Google’s quantum team and said some projections suggest practical threats to current cryptographic systems could emerge as early as 2029.
“Regardless of where the reality hits, we can’t afford to be unprepared,” he said.
“We actually have to be proactive to be able to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” he added.
XRP Price to $500?
The comments come as investors continue to debate XRP’s long-term price potential — with some predictions reaching massive highs.
In a recent analysis, crypto commentator Sam Daodu argued that these targets remain detached from economic reality.
“With around 62 billion XRP in circulation today, a $500 XRP price would put its market cap at roughly $31 trillion,” Daodu wrote.
Adding: “All the gold ever mined, every bar, coin, and necklace on the planet, is worth somewhere around $30 trillion. So, XRP at $500 would be worth about as much as all the gold in the world.”
Daodu also noted that XRP at $500 would imply a valuation roughly 14 times larger than the entire crypto market today.
The analyst traced the origins of the forecast to claims that XRP’s value would eventually need to reflect the size of the global cross-border payments industry.
However, he argued that the assumption misunderstands how payment networks operate.
According to Daodu, transaction volume flowing through a network should not be conflated with the value of the underlying asset that facilitates those transactions.
“A payment network carries value from one side to the other, but it doesn’t hold that value on its books,” Daodu said.
“Visa is the best example. It processes more than $14 trillion in payments every year, yet the company itself is worth about $600 billion, not $14 trillion.”
He said that even trillions of XRP were moved across borders, the same tokens are reused “thousands of times a day.”
“The volume can be gigantic while the XRP price stays ordinary,” he said.
Institutional Demand Driving XRPL Growth
Akinyele also said institutional interest in XRPL has strengthened following the easing of regulatory uncertainty surrounding Ripple.
“I think the market is very much shifting back to the technology because the use cases are real,” he said.
The executive said average daily transactions on the network have risen significantly and highlighted growing activity tied to Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin.
“We’re seeing more utility, more growth,” Akinyele said.
A key area of development is also Ripple’s vision of an emerging “agentic economy” in which AI agents and autonomous machines transact directly with one another.
“The blockchains that are purpose-built to make that frictionless are going to be the default for agents,” he said.
He argued that XRPL’s low transaction costs and fast settlement speeds make it well-suited for machine-to-machine payments.
“We’re already seeing experiments with robot-to-robot payments or agent-to-agent payments,” he said.
What It Means for XRP Price
Although Akinyele did not discuss XRP price targets, his comments reinforce Ripple’s broader strategy of pushing XRPL as infrastructure for institutional finance.
This is central to the debate highlighted by Daodu.
While technological improvements and institutional adoption could support higher XRP valuations over time, they are unlikely to be enough to reach the massive market-cap assumptions often touted by crypto bulls.
CCN previously reported that Ripple’s former CTO, David Schwartz, doubted bullish price predictions.
Responding to speculation that XRP could reach between $50 and $100 per token within the next few years.
He said that if “many rational people believed that there was a 10% chance that XRP hit $100 within a few years, they definitely wouldn’t sell very much today at much less than $10.”
Kurt Robson is a London-based reporter at CCN, specialising in the fast-moving worlds of crypto and emerging technology. He began his career covering local news in Cornwall after graduating from Falmouth University with First Class Honours in Journalism. There, he cut his teeth on everything from council meetings to missing swans.
He quickly rose through the ranks to become a frontline journalist at several of the UK’s leading national newspapers. Over the years, he has interviewed musicians and celebrities, reported from courtrooms and crime scenes, and secured multiple front-page exclusives.
Following the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurt shifted his focus to technology journalism—just ahead of the AI boom. With a natural curiosity and a trained eye for emerging trends, he has found a new rhythm in reporting on innovation.
At CCN, Kurt's work focuses on the cutting edge of crypto, blockchain, AI, and the evolving digital world. Drawing on his background in people-first reporting and his deep interest in disruptive tech, Kurt delivers stories that are insightful, entertaining, and human-centric.
