In a recent statement, Wells Fargo’s Treasury Management officer Shannon Thorp provided an eye-catching price prediction for XRP. The forward-thinking executive anticipates a potential surge in XRP’s value to anywhere between $100 and $500 in the short term, specifically within the next 4 to 7 months. This price hike prediction represents an astounding 14,200 % to 71,400% increase from the current trading value.
Finding The Right Best Model
Thorp acknowledges the longstanding debate within the XRP community, where one faction relies solely on chart patterns and trends exhibited by Bitcoin to draw short-term price predictions. On the other hand, another group emphasizes the significance of XRP’s utility, believing that its partnerships and the replacement of antiquated systems will be the key drivers of its price. However, Thorp presents a novel perspective, emphasizing that XRP is NOT a security and basing price forecasts on traditional securities logic is counterintuitive to the original vision set forth by the Ripple team.
Expanding on her rationale, Thorp introduces the concept of Liquidity Strength (LS) as a pivotal metric to consider when predicting XRP’s future value. To ascertain a price range for the token, she takes into account the total supply, including circulating tokens, burnt tokens, those owned by banks, governments, and individuals, and assumes that Ripple has released all their XRP from escrow.
According to Thorp, if one company were to possess all 100 billion tokens, their Liquidity Strength (LS) in a price range of $1.00 to $5.00 would amount to $100 billion to $500 billion. However, she argues that such a calculation fails to consider the potential growth in the economy, messaging and settling activities, and the continuous benefits derived from using XRP.
Drawing on real-world examples, Thorp compares the token’s potential to that of SWIFT, which handles approximately 44.8 million messages per day. Even if Ripple could capture only 30% of SWIFT’s daily value, which she approximates at $7 trillion, it would result in a staggering $2.1 trillion in daily value (roughly 13.2 million messages) for XRP. Considering XRP’s quick settlement time of 1 to 5 seconds, the liquidity would indeed be present. However, Thorp highlights the challenge of conducting large transactions with limited Liquidity Strength, as it may require a significant portion of a bank’s XRP holdings.
XRP Price Prediction
To arrive at her price prediction, Thorp factors in various elements such as all global banks, burnt XRP, individual holdings, XRP distributed to large banks and creators, and tokens available on liquidity hubs and exchanges. She estimates that at any given time, there may be 50 to 75 billion XRP supporting Liquidity Strength (LS). When distributed across approximately 300 to 1000 different banks, liquidity providers, and governments, this would yield around $75 million XRP/dollars for each institution.
Taking into account J.P. Morgan as a top-tier bank with a daily transaction volume exceeding $8 trillion, Thorp postulates that even if Ripple captured only 10% of this market, which amounts to $800 billion, the existing 75 billion XRP in circulation would not suffice to move such massive sums efficiently. Thorp acknowledges that this estimation solely pertains to cross-border transactions and does not encompass derivatives, real estate, CBDCs, technical parallels, and NFTs.
With the groundwork laid, Thorp makes her price prediction, projecting XRP’s price range to be anywhere from $100 to $500 in the near short term (4 – 7 months). Her calculation is based on the Liquidity Strength (LS) scenario, where a XRP price of $100 with a supply of 50 billion XRP would yield an LS of $5 trillion, while $500 would result in an LS of $25 trillion.
According to Thorp, this valuation gives the market breathing room, allows for growth, and assures that no single entity needs to hold billions of XRP to operate daily. Furthermore, Thorp believes that a potential “flip of the switch” moment could trigger this price surge – an event akin to a re-evaluation for XRP, similar to how gold is assessed.
Notably, Thorp’s speculation sets an exciting stage for the future of XRP, albeit it is important to remember that her prediction is based on several assumptions that may or may not actualize. As always, those interested in investing should conduct their due diligence, consider multiple perspectives, and make informed decisions.
At press time, the XRP price was at $0.7074.
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com