Comments by Aleksey Khayrutdinov, FLOGmall founder and CEO

According to Coinmarketcap.com, Ripple (XRP) is currently the third most popular cryptocurrency by capitalization, holding steady at about 40 billion dollars. As of the start of this week, it has been the only top-5 cryptocurrency that has had a positive trend since it started trading. However, the Thursday sell-off took it to new lows around 0.92.

However, it still has quite a bit of potential for future growth. The Ripple technology has one huge advantage: international payments through it take 10–15 seconds, while in the SWIFT system they take about 3 days. This is exactly why news from the financial sector could further spur Ripple’s growth.  

What would drive the growth?

Last week it became known that the Ripple team had concluded two new partnership agreements.  The first was with the telecom company IDT, and the second was with the international payment service MercuryFX. They will test the functionality of xRapid Ripple, based on the Ripple token, for the purpose of increasing speed and lowering commissions when making payments.  

As of now, this cryptocurrency has already generated quite a bit of positive signs. For example, in early January the international payment system Moneygram announced plans to add the XRP token to increase speed and lower commissions.

What is there to be afraid of?

There are challenges, however.

First, rapid growth is being held back by ongoing litigation with R3.

Second, there is stiff blockchain-based competition, which does not let up for even a second.

Third, the development of regulations for these kinds of cryptocurrencies is still in progress. One important fact from Ripple’s story is important to remember when talking about this. In May, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network fined Ripple 700 thousand dollars for violating the bank secrecy laws relating to money laundering prevention.

What are the prospects?

Taking into account the limited nature of XRP (only 100 billion), and the volume of transactions through SWIFT, we get a 153-trillion-dollar market. If all this volume is stored in XRP, not including funds used to create the wallet and which are not in circulation, the value of each of the 100 billion XRP tokens would be $1530. The average value for each day in the year would be $4.19, and if you consider that there are only about 250 business days per year, it would be $6.12. But that would only be once Ripple takes over the world. For now, all we have to do is wait for news about yet another agreement with a major financial company, each of which will increase the currency’s value.

Under these conditions, a return to above the three-dollar mark within the next few weeks is quite possible. The price has stalled around $0.90 and it may be getting ready for another leap after a huge sell-off.