On-chain statistics indicate that as of the third quarter of 2024, 23% of accounts that have been holding XRP for over five years have a balance of more than one million US dollars, primarily due to the posion-cost of under 0.01 US dollars prior to 2017. Using the historical lowest price of XRP in 2014 at $0.002, if an investor purchased $50,000, the value today (calculated at $0.52) has grown to $13 million, with a 26,000% return rate, much larger than the average annual return of 11% of the S&P 500 index over the same time. Ripple’s 2023 quarterly earnings report indicated that its institutional customers’ cross-border payment volume grew 65% year-over-year, bringing the average daily destruction value (transaction fees) of XRP to 12,000, validating the long-term sense of “xrp millionaire potential.”.
In terms of technology adoption, XRP Ledger nodes reached more than 1,500 in 2024, an increase of 300% compared to 2020, and network security was elevated to a standard operation level of 99.99%. According to a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report, the fee of cross-border payment to banks via RippleNet has dropped to 4% of the cost with regular SWIFT (average of $0.3 per transaction), and processing time has been reduced from 3 days to 3 seconds. If 30% of all global central bank digital currencies (CBDCS) utilize XRP as the bridge asset by 2025 (current test cases being Singapore and Japan), the IMF model predicts that transactions per day on the chain will be more than 8 million, and the price will reach 2.8 US dollars. The returns of the early holders (e.g., those who bought it for 0.2 US dollars back in 2017) will be multiplied by 14.
And yet there are threats as well: The 30-day annualized standard deviation of XRP’s value in 2023 was 78%, higher than Bitcoin’s 52%. If re-filing the SEC lawsuit in the US results in a 20% increase in compliance expenses (as estimated by Goldman Sachs), its market capitalization would drop 30% to 40%. Yet, CoinMetrics data indicate that “whale addresses” with more than one million XRP grew 18% in 2024 to 1,240, totaling 41% of circulating supply, signaling that substantial quantities of funds still place their bets on the “xrp millionaire potential.”. For instance, when the XRP trust Fund’s holdings in Grayscale increased by 120% in 2021, its price increased by 85% within two weeks. Were such institutional actions to recur in 2025, it would prompt a rush to buy in the market.
Historical examples confirm the wealth effect of early holders: XRP escalated from $0.006 to $3.84 (640 times) in 2017, and having just 1,562 would render someone a million-dollar asset. After Ripple won the lawsuit against the SEC partially in 2023, XRP’s value increased by 70% within 24 hours. Out of the top 5% of the holding addresses (approximately 98,000), 67% of the accounts had a balance greater than the one million US dollar level. If the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency is expected to be more than 10 trillion US dollars in 2025 (2.8 trillion US dollars as of today), and the market share of XRP increases from 1.8% to 5%, then the unit price of XRP will need to be 4.5 US dollars. When that occurs, investors who bought earlier than 2018 and did not short sell (at a median of 0.3 US dollars) will receive a 15 times return. Investors must be wary against market adjustment cycles. It is better to follow a “cost-averaging strategy” – the monthly fixed investment in XRP must not exceed 10% of the amount that can be invested, and a stop-loss level of 25% needs to be maintained to mitigate the impact of black swan shocks.