Experts can’t agree on XRP

• Finder.com pooled together cryptocurrency experts to get their thoughts on XRP and where the token is headed, with their average price prediction being $2.55 by end of 2022 if it wins the SEC case.
• The experts couldn’t seem to agree on whether XRP is a worthless token only good for speculation or if it will replace SWIFT, with both sides defending their views passionately.

XRP – will it go to the moon or is it destined for doom? This was the question that 36 cryptocurrency experts deliberated on in a recent survey by Finder.com. Their average price prediction for the token by the end of the year is $2.55, but only if it wins the SEC case. But whether XRP is the future of remittances or if it’s a worthless speculative token divided the panel as each side defended its views strongly.

At press time, XRP is trading at $0.60, down by 2.85 percent in the past week for a $28.9 billion market cap, the sixth-largest in the crypto industry. This year, the highest it has hit is $0.9 in March and at its current price, it’s 84 percent below its all-time high of $3.84 from back in 2018.

One of the biggest factors in the XRP price narrative is the SEC which has been going after Ripple for several months under the accusation that it violated securities laws by issuing XRP. If it beats this case, XRP will end the year at $2.55, the experts believe. However, if the SEC has its way, the token will end the year at $0.68, they predicted on average.

By the end of 2025, XRP should hit $3.61 while by the end of this decade, it should hit $4.98, they predicted.

Related: Big win for Ripple as new document suggests XRP is not a security

XRP – worthless token or the future of remittances?

The experts polled by Finder included Jason Lau, the COO of Okcoin, Coinmama co-founder Laurence Newman, the head economist at ConsenSys Lex Sokolin, Unocoin founder Sathvik Vishwanath, CoinFlip chairman Daniel Polotsky, Upstream president Mark Elenowitz and Jimmy Nguyen, the founding president of the BSV Blockchain Association.

On what they think about XRP, the experts were divided, with the skeptics saying that it has no real utility.

One of these is Matthew Harry, the head of funds at DigitalX Asset Management who doesn’t think XRP is anything more than a speculative asset.

The XRP token is worthless for anything other than speculation. The underlying technology is terrific but the token itself does not currently have a use, it simply attracts speculators as it is cheap and an easily digestible value prop – none of which is born out in the token.

Polotsky, the founder of BTC ATM machines provider CoinFlip also believes that XRP attracts traders because of its low price, but this is a misguiding metric, he believes.

I believe XRP does not offer anything proprietary compared to its peers to justify its relatively large market cap. I think that the project has a lot of inflated interest due to retail investors ignoring its market cap and looking at its per-unit price (less than $1), and erroneously thinking that because it’s ‘so cheap’ it will grow a lot faster than its peers. This is simply a great marketing trick, but eventually, the lack of fundamentals of the project will be reflected in its price as the industry matures.

Carol Alexander disagrees. The professor of finance at the University of Sussex told Finder:

It is not like any other crypto. If it wins vs SEC, it really will start to replace SWIFT.