XRP, like much of crypto, has spent 2026 stuck well below its old highs, even as Ripple turns itself into a regulated bank and spot XRP ETFs surpass $1 billion in assets under management (AUM
XRP, like much of crypto, has spent 2026 stuck well below its old highs, even as Ripple turns itself into a regulated bank and spot XRP ETFs surpass $1 billion in assets under management (AUM).
The blitz has revived the question every holder keeps asking: when will the price actually move?
Jake Claver, an outspoken XRP bull who chairs the multi-family office Digital Ascension Group, laid out his thesis in a conversation with TheStreet Roundtable’s Armando Pantoja.
Claver argues XRP's price has been held back by institutions trading off-exchange, and that ETFs, Ripple's move into regulated banking, and clearer rules could spark a sharp repricing later in 2026, with a far bigger move over the next decade.
Related: XRP 'cannot catch a break', says top analyst
ETFs and institutional vehicles are the biggest metrics Jake is looking at. Spot XRP ETFs launched in November 2025 and have drawn over $1 billion in cumulative inflows. Claver also points to EverNorth, an XRP treasury company going public via a SPAC merger with Ripple contributing about 127 million XRP, as another demand channel.
The second is Ripple’s regulated-banking push. Claver says Ripple needs its Fed master account to “really capatilize.” Ripple received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank in late 2025 and has applied for a Federal Reserve master account through its Standard Custody subsidiary, on top of 2025 acquisitions including prime broker Hidden Road.
"They got their banking license. They've got the prime broker. They made a lot of acquisitions last year to make them uniquely positioned," Claver said.
The last is regulation. Claver does not expect the U.S. to get clear market-structure rules in 2026. The CLARITY Act has faced significant delays since passing the U.S. House in mid 2025, and with the August recess coming up, along with midterms, lawmakers attention is divided across many issues.
The core of his bull case is that real demand is not yet showing up in the price. He echoes Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's "pent-up demand" framing, that banks, institutions and governments are adopting XRP faster than the price reflects
Claver claims large buyers accumulate through over-the-counter (OTC) desks and dark pools, keeping volume off public exchanges so they "can buy it cheaper," and says the price is being "manipulated or pushed down" as a result.
Once those private pools run dry, buying shifts to exchanges and the price "reflects the demand."
"Once there's not enough liquidity over there ... they'll have to move that volume to exchanges. And that's when we're going to get the real reflection of the price,” he said.
As of writing, XRP was trading at $1.11.
Short term, Pantoja and Claver floated $8 to $25, and Claver expects a violent move because liquidity is thin above current levels. He claims XRP briefly "gapped" to $90 to $100 on some exchanges, which he reads as a preview.
Long term, his call is extreme.
"10 years ... I think you could see $1 million piece token for XRP,” he said.
This price is conditional on several factors, however, including full tokenization of the economy, agentic AI payments becoming mainstream, and even multiplanetary expansion.
With roughly 59 to 60 billion XRP in circulation, $1 million per token implies a valuation in the tens of quadrillions of dollars, orders of magnitude beyond all the wealth on Earth today.
