After hitting $3.65 last July, many XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) investors thought the coin was finally on its way to break its $3.84 ATH for the first time in 7 years. But XRP has underperformed since peaking last year, dropping by about 70% over the past year.
Despite the underwhelming price, XRP holders still have faith that the coin could explode one day. Key events are coming up that could spark a massive rally for XRP, like the Digital Asset CLARITY Act, so the crypto is not one to rule out yet.
As the crypto market continues to navigate a bearish downturn, how high could the XRP price go in the next bull run when the market turns?
When Is the Next Crypto Bull Cycle?
The crypto market usually runs on a rhythm set by Bitcoin, which has held for more than a decade. The Bitcoin halving event that happens every four years cuts the reward for mining Bitcoin in half. Prices then boom in the year or so after the halving, peak and crash the year after that, then drift sideways until the next halving comes around and the whole rhythm kicks off again.
Currently, we’re in the crash-and-drift stretch, as Bitcoin peaked at $126,000 in October 2025, which is about a year and a half after the last halving in 2024 and right in line with past cycles. The Bitcoin price has since shed roughly half its value and trades near $64,000. If the halving pattern holds again, the cycle bottom could come in late 2026, which could see BTC trade somewhere between $50,000 and $55,000, and the next bull market builds through 2027 before running into the next halving in 2028.
One key signal suggests the bottom is getting close. CryptoQuant’s realized profit-and-loss ratio, which measures how much of all the Bitcoin out there is being held at a loss, just fell to its lowest point in 43 months. The last time it went this low was December 2022, which is right before the market bottomed after the FTX collapse. A reading this deep means those who wanted to sell have mostly already sold. And once the selling is exhausted, there’s little supply left to drag the price lower, and that usually marks the bottom in past cycles.
However, there’s a catch. The four-year halving clock isn’t as dependable as it used to be. Over the past two years, ETFs and big institutions have moved heavily into crypto, and their money behaves differently from the retail buyers who drove earlier cycles. These new buyers chase returns based on interest rates.
When the Federal Reserve keeps rates high, safe investments like government bonds pay well, so Wall Street buyers stay away from assets like crypto. But when the Fed cuts rates, those safe returns shrink, and the money rotates back into risky bets like crypto. That’s why the cycle now bends to the Fed more than to Bitcoin’s mining schedule, because the biggest buyers move on rate decisions rather than the halving.
The good news is that both the halving pattern and the Fed’s rate cut expectations now seem to align in the same window. Most people expect the Fed to start cutting rates in late 2026, right when the halving cycle is due to bottom. That combination could kick off the next bull run, likely in 2027.
What Decides How High XRP Goes
The run-up to 2026 is the best stretch Ripple has had in its life. It beat the SEC in court in August 2025, XRP ETFs launched late last year, it won approval for a bank charter, and its RLUSD stablecoin passed a billion dollars. Yet through all of it, the XRP price kept falling. So how high XRP goes has little to do with whether Ripple keeps winning. It comes down to a tug-of-war between two vital factors.
On one side is the money trying to get in, and the biggest piece of it is the market structure bill, which would lock XRP’s status as a commodity into U.S. law for good. XRP is already treated as a commodity through an SEC ruling, but that ruling could be undone by a future administration. Big investors like pension funds and asset managers won’t put serious money into an asset whose legal footing could still change, so they have largely stayed on the sidelines. Making that status permanent through the CLARITY Act is what would bring them in.
The pipe that money would flow through is the ETFs, which hold about $1.48 billion in XRP today. Two major banks think that figure could reach $4 to $8 billion in the first year, but only if the bill passes and those big institutions finally move.
On the other hand, money is quietly leaking out. Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is eating into the job XRP was built to do. When banks move money across borders, they would rather use a coin pinned to a steady dollar than XRP, whose price swings around. So the share of XRP Ledger transactions that actually use XRP for payments has fallen off.
Moreover, only about 40% of Ripple’s 300-plus banking partners use On-Demand Liquidity—the service that actually buys XRP to move money between currencies. The other 60% run on Ripple’s messaging rails, which never touch the token.
Of those two factors, the market structure bill matters most. It’s the one thing that could pull the big institutional money in fast enough to outweigh what RLUSD is quietly taking away. So how high XRP goes in the next cycle depends, more than anything, on whether that bill becomes law.
How High Could XRP Realistically Go?
Below is how high the XRP price could realistically go in the next bull cycle, laid out in three scenarios from the most likely to the least.
The Bearish Prediction: $1 to $2
If the market structure bill stalls, this is the most likely outcome. Without it, the big institutions stay on the sidelines, the $4 to $8 billion in ETF money expected would never show up, and XRP loses the one catalyst that could outweigh the RLUSD problem.
XRP would then keep moving with Bitcoin and little else, drifting along with the broader market instead of climbing on its own. That likely leaves it stuck between $1 and $2 through the next cycle, close to where it trades today, even if the rest of the market recovers.
The Base Prediction: $3 to $5
If the CLARITY Act passes and ETF money keeps coming in at a steady pace, XRP could recover most of what it lost and climb back to roughly its old highs. Some of that sidelined institutional demand would convert, though slowly, held back by the same RLUSD problem from before. That points to a range of $3 to $5, which is roughly where most 2027 analyst forecasts cluster.
The Bullish Prediction: $7 to $10
For XRP to reach $7 to $10, more has to happen than the bill passing. The sidelined demand would have to turn into steady buying, the $4 to $8 billion in ETF money would need to arrive, and the Fed’s rate cuts would have to bring risk appetite roaring back, all in the same window. If those line up, XRP could push well past its old high and into new record territory. This is where the serious bank targets fall, like Standard Chartered’s $7 call for 2027.
Will XRP Ride the Next Bull Run?
The next bull run looks close to certain for 2027. What’s far less certain is whether XRP actually rides it or watches the money flow past, and that depends on the market structure bill. It’s the one catalyst the market clearly reacts to, and the only thing big enough to fix XRP’s core problem.
If it becomes law, it could pull that 60% of partners onto rails that use XRP, and give big institutions the permanent legal footing they want before committing serious money. So if the bill passes and that demand starts to convert once the 2027 window opens, XRP could reach $5 to $10.
But if it stalls, XRP would likely drift through another cycle no matter how much Ripple builds, because building was never XRP’s problem. Turning that growth into demand for the token has always been the hard part.
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