Should You Buy XRP While It's Still Below $3?

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) is priced at less than $3 at the moment, and well below its all-time high. Meanwhile, the crypto sector is in the doldrums or perhaps even the early innings of a bear market, and Ripple, XRP's issuer, is working hard to load the calendar with catalysts for the coin's long-term growth.

Is buying XRP below $3 a sensible investment, or is it cheap because it's genuinely weak?

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There's a lot to like here

At its core, XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which was designed by Ripple to serve financial institutions with fast, low-cost payments and transfers, as well as to act as a neutral bridge asset between different fiat currencies in the context of foreign exchange.

Ripple has compelling reasons to continue advancing the XRPL. The company is developing additional services and infrastructure for payments, asset tokenization, and compliance-friendly asset issuance on the ledger, which directly ties its own future to the chain's success.

In theory, the more appealing XRPL becomes as a home for financial institutions and fintechs, the more valuable XRP itself becomes as the fluid that flows throughout the entire system and makes it function. And with the recent approval of the first spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF), there's now a new opportunity for more capital to flow in from the traditional financial system.

On Nov. 13, Canary Capital's Canary XRP ETF (NASDAQ: XRPC) began trading, and it drew roughly $245 million in first-day inflows, making it the biggest crypto ETF launch of 2025 so far. More XRP ETFs from other asset managers are expected to be launched, providing financial institutions and institutional investors with a comprehensive menu of ETF-based access.

The existence of XRP ETFs does not guarantee higher prices, but they make it much easier for slow-moving pools of capital to accumulate the crypto and keep it parked for long periods. The asset managers that issue the ETFs need to hold the underlying coins, which can reduce the freely trading supply over time if the inflows prove durable. This remains a significant advantage for buying the coin, as large buyers now have the ability to scale in for the first time.

Then there is Evernorth, a Ripple-backed digital asset treasury (DAT) designed specifically to accumulate and hold XRP. Evernorth plans to go public via a merger soon, aiming to raise more than $1 billion with the explicit goal of using that capital to buy XRP and become the token's largest institutional holder.

If Evernorth hits even a large fraction of its fundraising goals, it will function as a kind of permanent capital vehicle for the coin, absorbing supply that might otherwise be available to the market. It or other DATs holding XRP could one day become sellers, and once the price gets high enough, they might stop buying it. Nonetheless, for now, they're accumulating the coin, and the $3 level will probably not turn them into sellers or stop their purchasing activity.

Incentives and new buyers aren't the whole story

Put these pieces together, and you have a supply-tightening flywheel for XRP. ETFs and treasury companies increase the quantity of locked-up tokens not for sale, and Ripple's payments infrastructure continues to lean on the crypto as the native fee and bridge asset. If that machine continues to spin, sub-$3 prices are unlikely to last forever.

However, it behooves investors to consider the possibility that the coin will remain under $3 for a bit longer, among other factors.

Historically, XRP has been brutally volatile. It has crashed from peaks above $3 to lows near $0.14 in past market cycles, and even more recently it swung from its old range near $0.50 to new highs above $3 in less than a year -- and it could still swing back down again. Investors should assume that buying while it's under $3 could still mean living through painful drawdowns.

Does that mean it's better to wait for a deeper downturn to start buying it? Probably not. Timing the market won't work.

Instead, understand that the $3 level is largely psychological, just like any other price point. Ripple will continue to build out XRP, regardless of its current price, whether it's $1, $5, or $20, and every bit of success it has in attracting new users will continue to have positive implications for the coin's future price.

So buy XRP while it's under $3, and don't stop after that, either.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Canary Xrp ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.