Where Will XRP (Ripple) Be in 5 Years?

Five years from now, in August of 2031, I think XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) will trade lower than $1. Here's why.

As of August 2026, XRP has lost roughly 70% from its July 2025 peak near $3.65. That's in spite of some major catalysts for the token, like the end of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) case against Ripple and the launch of spot XRP exchange-traded funds in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Ripple -- the company behind XRP -- cleared more than $3 trillion through its prime brokerage in 2025 while securing a national trust bank charter. The company is becoming a much more serious financial institution, and it's gaining more and more partners in the industry, yet XRP continues to fall.

The problem for XRP investors is that Ripple's success is no longer XRP's success.

Ripple's banking partnerships do not necessarily create demand for XRP

The XRP bull case goes like this: Banks adopt Ripple's technology, they're forced to use XRP, which drives demand for the token, and the price follows.

That argument misunderstands how banks use Ripple's products, and it fails to take into account how the ecosystem has changed.

While XRP used to play a more central role, it's quickly being replaced by Ripple's stablecoin, RLUSD. The stablecoin can serve as a bridge asset -- a sort of go-between -- in the kinds of transactions XRP traditionally powers. If you're a bank moving dollars around the world, would you rather use a dollar-pegged token or an asset whose price can move while the transfer is in flight?

By August 2026, RLUSD had crossed $1.7 billion in market value and was fast becoming a central part of Ripple's payment ecosystem.

XRP's token burns are too small to make it meaningfully scarcer

Bulls will still argue that this can lead to XRP appreciating, since the token is burned when RLUSD is used, and there is a finite supply of XRP. There will only ever be 100 billion XRP tokens, and every transaction on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) -- including every RLUSD transaction -- destroys a tiny amount of it.

Unfortunately, the burn is too small to matter. One analysis estimated that even at Visa-level transaction volume for RLUSD, the XRP Ledger would destroy only about 0.0075% of the supply each year.

Image source: Getty Images.

In fact, by mid-2026, all transactions on the network since its inception in 2012 -- well before RLUSD was introduced -- had burned only 14.4 million XRP in total.

XRP's ETFs can fuel speculation, but its biggest catalysts have already passed

Truth be told, the best argument against me has little to do with Ripple's payment plumbing. XRP's price, despite the narrative, has never really tracked how much the network is used. It's been driven, in my view, by hype -- and hype is fickle. There absolutely could be another speculative rally that drives XRP's price well above where it trades today. I just don't think that will last.

As time goes on, and it becomes abundantly clear that the bull story that has been told about XRP isn't true, the hype will fade. So, too, will XRP's price.

Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Visa and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.