Is XRP (Ripple) About to Plunge by 90%? History Paints a Very Ugly Picture.

XRP has fallen 60% from its last record high of $3.65 and now trades around $1.45, with the article arguing it could drop another 90% toward its post-2018 low of $0.15. The bearish case centers on structural risks: Ripple Payments can function without XRP, Ripple's new stablecoin RLUSD may reduce the token's utility, and the asset remains vulnerable due to its centralized nature and past SEC litigation. The piece is opinionated rather than event-driven, so the likely market impact is limited, though it reinforces negative sentiment around XRP.

Analysis

The key second-order issue is not XRP adoption, but payment-rail substitution. If banks can get instant settlement through Ripple using fiat or a stablecoin, XRP becomes a toll token rather than the core product, which compresses its addressable demand and makes token value increasingly disconnected from network usage. That is structurally bearish because the market still prices XRP like a leveraged proxy on Ripple adoption, while the actual monetization path is shifting toward lower-volatility instruments that reduce the need to hold XRP inventory.

The bigger competitive threat is stablecoins, not Bitcoin or generic crypto sentiment. Stablecoins improve working-capital efficiency for banks and corporates because they eliminate mark-to-market risk during settlement windows; that matters more than theoretical throughput advantages over SWIFT. If this trend persists for 6-18 months, XRP could transition from a speculative payment beneficiary to a stranded bridge asset, with any upside capped by utility leakage to RLUSD and competitors building on the same rails.

Near term, the path of least resistance is lower because liquidation is being reinforced by narrative deterioration rather than a single fundamental catalyst. The market has already re-rated the token aggressively, but that is not enough to neutralize a “dead-end utility” story: once investors stop believing token demand scales with payment volume, flows can reverse much faster than underlying adoption metrics. The contrarian risk is a regulatory or ecosystem-driven reflexive squeeze, but that would likely be a trading event over days to weeks, not a durable revaluation.

The more interesting trade is to express the view through crypto-rail substitution rather than an outright XRP short if borrow is tight or spot exposure is operationally simpler. In a risk-off tape, this thesis also fits with de-risking from high-beta digital assets into cash-flowing tech beneficiaries, especially if capital rotates out of speculative tokens into AI infrastructure and secular growth names.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Short XRP on rallies or via 1-3 month put spreads; target a retest of prior support with asymmetric downside if stablecoin adoption continues to displace bridge-token demand.
• Pair trade: long a diversified stablecoin/payment-rail beneficiary basket vs short XRP for 3-6 months; the trade monetizes the market’s underappreciation of settlement assets with lower volatility and better product-market fit.
• If spot short is expensive, use XRP downside structures: buy 25-delta puts and finance with 10-delta puts 20-30% lower; this captures a potential fast move lower while limiting theta bleed.
• Avoid initiating fresh long XRP exposure until there is evidence that token demand is rising faster than non-XRP settlement volume; otherwise the risk/reward remains skewed against holders over the next 6-12 months.
• Use any regulatory headline-driven squeeze to trim/short into strength rather than chase downside intraday; the setup is bearish, but headline risk can produce sharp 1-2 day reversals.