Could Buying XRP Today Set You Up for Life?

The life-changing riches Bitcoin generated in its early years helped attract millions of investors seeking the next big thing. XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) has become one of the most popular altcoins, appreciating over 17,700% over the past decade.

XRP is the native token for the XRP ledger, a blockchain used to settle cross-border transactions. XRP showed a lot of promise due to the XRP ledger's speed and low fees. Unfortunately, litigation and broader regulatory uncertainty have hampered XRP, which is only up about 100% over the past five years.

With the litigation now behind it and an exciting new catalyst ahead, there's renewed hope that buying XRP today could be a life-changing opportunity.

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Agentic AI has become a wild card

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the world. Now, AI agents can autonomously perform tasks, including initiating and executing online transactions. As a result, agentic AI has become one of the fastest-growing opportunities in the payments space. The XRP ledger's low fees and near-instant payment settlement have made it popular for agentic payments.

Last month, Ripple released an AI starter kit and integrated the X402 payment protocol to help developers build agentic AI payment applications on the XRP ledger. According to data from Crypto Briefing, the XRP ledger has seen a surge in activity since the company launched these tools and has recently surpassed 1.4 million agentic transactions.

Researchers estimate that agentic AI could conduct trillions of dollars of payment volume by the end of the decade. If XRP and the XRP ledger can play a meaningful role in that, it could produce the adoption of XRP that investors were initially hoping for as an alternative to SWIFT in cross-border banking.

Set for life, though? It's probably a stretch.

Activity on the XRP ledger burns XRP tokens, but the amount is minimal. If agentic AI transactions grow enough to meaningfully lower XRP's supply, it could help drive up token prices. The downside is that it's still far too early to know anything. Plus, XRP isn't a tiny digital asset anymore at its current market cap of $71 billion.

Even if agentic transactions help burn more tokens, the 62.46 billion tokens circulating are still nowhere near XRP's maximum supply of 100 billion tokens. There's still a bit of dilution to come over the years as Ripple unlocks more tokens from escrow. Personally, agentic AI makes me more optimistic about XRP's long-term upside.

That said, expecting to get rich by buying XRP today seems like a risky, unlikely gamble investors probably shouldn't take. Consider a more measured approach instead, such as including XRP in a diversified portfolio.

Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.