XRP Price Prediction: Ripple Token Could Sink to $0.15 in 12 Months

An XRP price prediction making the rounds this week lands on a number holders will not want to hear. The Ripple-linked token, which soared to a record $3.65 in 2025, could sink as low as $0.15 over the next 12 months, according to a fresh bearish thesis published on Thursday. That is the same price XRP bottomed at in 2020, after its previous 95% drawdown from the 2018 peak. The new call is not about sentiment. It is about structure.

Why the $0.15 XRP Price Prediction Is Back on the Table

The argument is uncomfortable for long-term holders because it borrows from history. After XRP's 2018 blow-off top, the token bled out for two years and bottomed near $0.15. The analyst behind this week's call thinks the same pattern is repeating. XRP is already 60% below last year's high, and the broader crypto market has been under pressure for six months as investors trim speculative exposure.

Here is the part holders tend to skip. The drawdown is not being driven by macro alone. XRP faces structural headwinds that most major coins simply do not, and those headwinds have nothing to do with Fed policy or ETF flows.

Ripple still controls an enormous slice of the supply. Of the 100 billion XRP that exist, roughly 38 billion sit with the company, released gradually into the market to meet institutional demand. The mechanics are spelled out in the official escrow disclosure published on the XRP Ledger blog, which describes an on-ledger schedule originally designed to release up to 1 billion XRP per month. That is not a rumor. That is the design.

The Centralization Problem No One Wants to Talk About

XRP differs from almost every other top-tier cryptocurrency because its fate is welded to a single company. Buy XRP and you are effectively underwriting Ripple's execution. That is a very different bet from owning Bitcoin, where the supply is capped at 21 million and no entity can change the rules.

Bitcoin coins are issued through mining, a permissionless process where anyone with enough compute can validate transactions and earn newly minted BTC. No board meeting decides the issuance schedule. No CEO can accelerate a release. That is why the US Securities and Exchange Commission never argued Bitcoin was a security, and why it spent years trying to slap that label on XRP.

The SEC case was settled last year under the Trump administration's pro-crypto posture, and XRP holders celebrated. Fair enough. But settling the lawsuit did not change the underlying architecture. Ripple still issues the coin. Ripple still holds most of it. That is the definition of a centralized token, and it is why the $0.15 scenario cannot be dismissed as doom-posting.

Investors who buy XRP must have faith in the operational success of Ripple, because their fates are very much intertwined.

Does Ripple Payments Actually Need XRP Anymore?

The bridge currency thesis is wobbling

This is where the thesis gets sharp. The entire bull case for XRP rests on it being the default bridge currency inside Ripple Payments, the cross-border settlement network banks use to cut out SWIFT intermediaries. In theory, an Australian bank sends XRP to an American bank, the American bank receives dollars, and both sides avoid foreign exchange fees. The fee on that transaction is tiny, roughly 0.00001 XRP, or a fraction of one US cent.

In practice, banks do not have to touch XRP to use Ripple Payments. The network also settles in fiat. That means Ripple Payments adoption can grow without a single new XRP being bought. The token's value is not mechanically tied to the network's success. Read that again if you hold XRP.

Then there is the stablecoin problem. Ripple launched its own dollar-pegged stablecoin, Ripple USD, with zero volatility and the full credibility of a fiat-backed reserve. RLUSD is purpose-built to be a bridge currency. Stablecoins are almost tailor-made for this job because counterparties do not have to worry about the asset losing 10% between send and receive. If you were a bank treasurer, which would you rather park in transit? A coin that moved 60% in a year, or a token pegged to a dollar?

• Ripple Payments settles in fiat, so XRP is optional for banks using the network
• RLUSD is a stablecoin built on the XRP Ledger, offering zero-volatility settlement
• Fees on RLUSD transactions are still paid in XRP, but only a trivial amount per transfer
• Bridge currencies generate equal buy and sell pressure, so they do not compound value

The Bridge Currency Paradox

Even if you squint past the centralization and the stablecoin risk, the bridge currency model has a mathematical flaw. A bridge currency, by design, gets bought and then immediately sold. In the Australia-to-America example, the Australian bank buys XRP. The American bank sells it. Net demand from that single transaction is zero.

Multiply that across millions of transfers and the picture does not change. Every purchase of XRP for bridging purposes is matched by an equal sale on the receiving end. That is very different from Bitcoin, where buyers tend to hold. It is different from Ethereum, where tokens are burned through transaction fees. XRP used purely as a bridge creates no persistent buying pressure.

This is the structural problem the bull thesis cannot easily solve. You can build the best payment rail in fintech and still leave the token's price unchanged, because the token is a pass-through instrument. That is not a knock on Ripple the company. It is just how bridge assets work.

What Would Have to Happen for XRP to Avoid $0.15?

The bearish thesis is not prophecy. It is a scenario. For it to be wrong, a few things would need to break right for XRP at roughly the same time. Banks would have to choose XRP over RLUSD as the preferred bridge, despite the volatility gap. Ripple would need to slow or halt its escrow releases long enough for supply dynamics to tighten. And retail demand would have to reignite hard enough to offset the bridge-currency math.

None of those are impossible. A spot XRP exchange-traded fund approval, a major bank consortium standardizing on XRP rather than stablecoins, or a dramatic burn mechanism could all rewrite the story. The problem is that every one of those catalysts depends on someone else's decision. Ripple can influence them. It cannot control them.

Meanwhile, the base case is not kind. A 60% drawdown from $3.65 puts XRP near $1.46 today, and the analyst sees roughly another 90% to go before the cycle finds a floor. For perspective, that final leg would wipe out holders who bought during the 2024 run-up and then averaged down, which is a painfully large cohort.

What This Means for Holders Right Now

If you have been in XRP since 2017 and rode the whole thing, the $0.15 call is just another cycle. You have seen it. You survived it. You know the drill. For anyone who bought above $2, though, the math is ugly, and the structural case for waiting it out is thinner than it looks on X.

The honest read is this. XRP has a real product behind it. Ripple is a functioning company with genuine bank clients. None of that is fake. But the token and the company are not the same asset, and the token has a list of structural disadvantages that only get worse as stablecoins take over the settlement rails the bull thesis was supposed to ride.

Call it what you want. The bearish call is not a meme. It is a spreadsheet.