Can XRP Climb to $100?

Everyone loves to hear a big, round number proposed as a price target for an asset they hold. In that vein, can XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) really get to $100, given that its current price is near $1.40? That sounds ambitious, but, in the minds of many crypto investors, it's not impossible at all, given crypto's extensive history of explosive moves.

So is it actually possible that XRP might hit or surpass $100 someday?

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The math is pretty decisive here

Let's do a quick calculation to vet this price target.

Today, there are about 61 billion XRP circulating, and the maximum possible supply is 100 billion. Priced at $100 per coin, its market cap based on its circulating supply alone would reach roughly $6.1 trillion. Using the maximum supply instead of the circulating supply to account for long-term supply issuance, that balloons to $10 trillion.

Gold, the most established store of value that exists, carries a market cap somewhere above $30 trillion, considering all of the metal that's held by miners and other public companies as well as banks and governments. But it took many decades for gold's market cap to reach that size.

For a bit more perspective, consider that the entire cryptocurrency market is currently valued at roughly $2.4 trillion. $1.4 trillion of that sum is Bitcoin alone. That means XRP at $100 would be a lot larger than every other cryptocurrency combined, and also a bit more valuable than Nvidia, the world's biggest public company today, which has a market cap of $4.4 trillion.

In other words, the odds for XRP look pretty bad here.

Don't get discouraged

The coin's boosters might argue that the XRP Ledger's role as a financial tool and capital management system justifies enormous valuations for XRP. As Ripple, the business that develops and issues XRP, continues to build out the chain's technology and its collection of financial services that use the coin, it's very probable that its price will increase significantly over the coming years.

But while it's technically possible in the distant future, it's still very hard to imagine a scenario in which Ripple's efforts push XRP's price to $100, even given years. XRP faces a lot of competition, and it takes a lot of new capital and activity on its network to make the coin's price budge.

None of this makes XRP a bad investment, so long as you can keep your expectations grounded. Most forecasts see the coin priced in the $5 range by 2030, assuming continued Ripple network growth and broader crypto market expansion.

That's plenty of upside for anyone who buys it now, even if it doesn't reach $100. So don't let the improbability of that dissuade you; there's real value here, and the growth outlook is still strong.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Nvidia, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.