Key Points
Ripple stands to make a lot of money if XRP's price goes up.
It can try all sorts of different tactics to boost the coin's price over the long term.
Given that Ripple is a financial business, the odds are good that it'll succeed with XRP.
- 10 stocks we like better than XRP ›
If you followed the XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) narrative five years ago, Ripple said the cryptocurrency would become a universal bridge currency for international money transfers. That story hasn't played out as envisioned.
While Ripple has processed over $95 billion in cumulative transfer volume, most of that flow now uses stablecoins or traditional money transfer technology rather than XRP. But there's still a bull case for XRP worth hearing -- one that doesn't depend on the old investment thesis at all and might even convince some skeptics.
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Here's why it should hold up under scrutiny.
Image source: Getty Images.
Ripple isn't a start-up anymore
In the last two years, Ripple completed six acquisitions worth more than $4 billion in aggregate, marking its pivot from a payments-focused business into a diversified financial infrastructure company.
The two most important purchases were of Hidden Road, a prime brokerage, and GTreasury, an enterprise treasury management system. Plus, in November 2025, Ripple raised $500 million from a group of investors including high-profile financial services providers like Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities.
In other words, Ripple is now a maturing company with both institutional credibility and serious capital to deploy.
The XRP Ledger, XRP's network, has thus become a sandbox for real financial experiments. For example, on May 6, a few financial businesses, including JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, and Ripple itself, completed the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury bond on the XRP Ledger.
So major financial institutions are willing to build on Ripple's infrastructure, and that's a bullish factor.
This company has a lot of skin in the game
Ripple holds roughly 34 billion XRP in escrow, about a third of the token's total 100 billion XRP supply.
At current prices, the escrowed XRP alone is worth tens of billions of dollars. Therefore, it's in Ripple's financial interest to invest in the ecosystem surrounding XRP and ensure that XRP is a good investment. Every tech upgrade, new partnership, and regulatory license that Ripple pursues exists at least in part to create conditions in which XRP can accrue value over time.
The bull case for XRP is thus that Ripple is more likely than not to do everything in its power to increase the coin's price.
Of course, Ripple could fail to sufficiently cater XRP to its target users in financial institutions or otherwise fail to convince investors that its efforts to increase the coin's value will lead to strong returns. Still, XRP is a crypto asset with a well-funded, strategically expanding company behind it, and many of its peers in crypto can't say the same.
Should you buy stock in XRP right now?
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JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
