Investor caution is mounting around XRP after a sharp retreat from last year’s highs, with one Reuters-style warning: don’t buy until the token wins meaningful banking adoption.
The Motley Fool’s Leo Sun argued that XRP’s rally — which pushed the token to $3.65 in July — has largely faded. As of this week, XRP trades near $1.43, with a market capitalization around $88 billion and a 52-week range of $1.14 to $3.65. Sun says the next durable catalyst would be a scaled partnership with a Tier‑1 bank or a major payments network that uses XRP to settle large cross‑border transfers.
XRP’s rise in 2024 and early 2025 followed three major developments. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Ripple ended with a smaller‑than‑expected fine, prompting relistings on major exchanges. The SEC also approved spot XRP exchange‑traded funds, widening investor access. And the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved Ripple’s application for a U.S. banking license, laying legal groundwork for broader fintech services.
Those moves, however, did not produce a sustained market advance. Sun pointed to several headwinds: the growing dominance of stablecoins for fiat settlements, macroeconomic pressures that have pushed risk appetite away from smaller altcoins, and structural limits in the XRP Ledger that hinder developer activity because it lacks native smart‑contract functionality comparable to Ethereum.
Ripple itself added an internal competitor in late 2024 by launching Ripple USD (RLUSD), a U.S. dollar‑pegged stablecoin intended for the same bridge‑currency use cases XRP once targeted. Because RLUSD holds parity with the dollar, institutions may prefer it over a volatile token for fiat settlement. That shift reduces a clear use case for XRP in traditional bank flows.
Pilot programs give a mixed signal. Trials with Japanese and Southeast Asian banks found XRP could cut cross‑border costs by roughly 60% versus SWIFT, and Japanese investors poured roughly $21.7 billion into XRP from July 2024 through June 2025, making Japan the token’s largest national market. Still, those pilots remain limited in scope and scale.
Policy could change the calculus. The CLARITY Act, passed by the U.S. House but still pending in the Senate, could clear regulatory obstacles for U.S. financial institutions to use XRP. Even so, Sun says adoption by a top global bank or a major payments network would be the clearest buy signal. Without such a partnership, he contends, XRP faces “existential challenges” and lacks fresh, scalable catalysts to justify a bullish stance.
Until Ripple secures broad institutional adoption, investors should view XRP as speculative and dependent on execution and regulatory clarity.
You can read the original article here: https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/04/25/dont-buy-xrp-until-this-happens/
