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

XRP has fallen 60% from its record high and the article argues it could drop another 90% from about $1.45 if stablecoins continue to displace its role in Ripple Payments. While XRP still has a use case and transaction fees are payable in XRP, Ripple now supports fiat and has launched RLUSD, weakening the token’s long-term demand thesis. The piece also highlights XRP’s regulatory overhang, including the SEC lawsuit and its settlement, as reasons sentiment remains vulnerable.

Analysis

The market is treating XRP less like a payments rail and more like a leveraged option on Ripple’s relevance, and that distinction matters. Once a payments ecosystem can settle in fiat or stablecoins, the utility premium for a volatile bridge asset compresses sharply; the economic moat shifts from token velocity to distribution and compliance. That creates a slow-burn negative loop: lower token utility reduces speculative demand, which raises volatility and further weakens institutional willingness to use it for settlement.

The bigger second-order winner is not XRP’s direct competitors, but the infrastructure stack around stablecoin issuance, custody, and compliance. If cross-border transfer economics migrate toward fiat/stablecoin rails, the fee pool moves away from speculative tokens and toward exchanges, custodians, and regulated fintech platforms that can monetize balances, AML/KYC, and treasury management. The litigation overhang also matters less for headline risk than for capital allocation: institutions are unlikely to build operational dependence on an asset whose legal classification can still change via policy regime, so adoption should remain capped even in favorable political conditions.

Near term, the setup is more about positioning than fundamentals. A further de-risking of crypto beta over the next 1-3 months would likely hit XRP harder than BTC because XRP lacks the ‘digital gold’ narrative and has a more visible fundamental substitution risk. The contrarian case is that the selloff may be partly overdone if the market is already pricing in total displacement; however, as long as Ripple can support settlement without XRP, the token’s terminal value should trade at a discount to broader crypto multiples rather than at a scarcity premium.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Short XRP vs long BTC on a 1-3 month horizon; thesis is that XRP underperforms on any renewed crypto risk-off because its utility is more easily substituted than BTC's store-of-value narrative. Target 20-30% relative downside with a tight stop if XRP reclaims prior resistance on volume.
• For event-driven exposure, sell XRP upside calls or run a call spread into rallies; implied vol should remain elevated while structural adoption uncertainty persists, making upside selling attractive versus spot ownership.
• Long a basket of regulated crypto-fintech infrastructure names over XRP beta if you need exposure to digital assets; preference goes to businesses monetizing custody, settlement, or compliance rather than tokens with contested utility.
• Avoid initiating fresh long XRP positions until there is evidence of net token demand in payments metrics, not just headline partnerships; absent that, the risk/reward skews toward another 30-50% drawdown over the next several quarters.
• If forced into a tactical long, use a small-size mean-reversion trade only after capitulation-style washout, with a 2:1 or better payoff; otherwise the asymmetry remains negative because downside can persist even if payments usage holds steady.