- Ripple Labs had great plans for XRP, but after two years of price and fundamental decline, is the dream over?
- The XRP price has been on a chronic decline since 2017, with little sign that it can keep up with other alts in the space
- JPM Coin has the potential to kill off XRP’s goals of bank adoption for good
XRP is often dismissed by many in the cryptocurrency community as a centralized bank-loving token that is destined for failure. The passionate XRP army is always quick to defend and promote the coin wherever they can, but it has become noticeable that some of those followers are becoming disillusioned with the token’s performance in recent years and the lack of progress made by Ripple Labs. Three years after it was set to revolutionize the banking world, is the XRP dream finally over?
XRP Token Price Stays Rooted
XRP has a reputation as a coin that can pump majestically. It made holders a fortune in 2016 and 2017, but ever since those heady days when it ran from $0.23 to $3.30 in the space of a few weeks in 2017, it has performed abysmally. Whereas other coins have enjoyed massive upsides since breaking through their bear market resistances in July, XRP has been anchored to the sub-$0.30 level, unable to break above it for a year and a half now:
The Bitcoin comparative chart is even worse, with XRP drifting into oblivion since a relief spike in September of 2018:
Part of the reason why the token is performing so badly is due to the activities of Ripple Labs co-founder, Jed McCaleb. McCaleb left Ripple Labs in 2013 with a haul of 9 billion XRP tokens in his pocket and an agreement that he would only sell a certain amount per week based on trading volume.
McCaleb is thought to have sold some five million XRP tokens since leaving the company and so has around four million left, so it is no wonder that the price gets beaten down every time it gets above a certain point. Until McCaleb is done selling, there will always be this threat hanging over XRP.
JPM Coin Could Kill Ripple’s Ambitions
XRP could also be in trouble on a fundamental level. For years it was talked about as the cryptocurrency most likely to be adopted by the big banks when they inevitably made their way into the digital arena. To Ripple’s credit they have picked up and maintained some big clients such as Santander and Standard Chartered, but these are not always what they seem – Santander uses the xRapid platform but not the XRP token, while other ‘partnerships’ have resulted in Ripple Labs having to pay the client to use their service, such as MoneyGram.
Ripple Labs have not announced the kind of world-beating adoption partnerships that the XRP army has been expecting since 2017, and in that time another challenger has come on the scene – JPM Coin. JPMorgan’s cryptocurrency, launched last month, has the potential to undermine all the work Ripple Labs have done to date, with their Liink service (formerly the Interbank Information Network) providing a 400 strong customer base off the bat, including over half of the world’s top banks.
It is highly likely that JPMorgan will have all its Liink members transacting with JPM Coin in the near future, decimating Ripple Labs’ potential client base. If the initial tests of JPM Coin prove successful, 2021 could prove to be the year that Ripple Labs is forced to wave goodbye to its dreams of transforming the traditional banking system through XRP.
2021 Could be the Year of Reckoning
In the search for international, gold standard adoption, the race may soon be over for Ripple and XRP. There may still be a place for it in the lower levels of the banking system or in other fields such as remittance, but this won’t be enough for the XRP army, who have been loudly proclaiming global domination since 2017.
This arrogance has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the community who are watching and waiting for the day when Ripple finally raises the white flag.
It could be coming sooner than they think.
