Dark Defender is one of the better-known chart analysts in the XRP community on X, and he has never been shy about putting very large price targets on the table. His latest one may be among t
Dark Defender is one of the better-known chart analysts in the XRP community on X, and he has never been shy about putting very large price targets on the table.
His latest one may be among the boldest yet.
With XRP trading around$1.50, Dark Defender believes the token is preparing for an Elliott Wave 3 move that could eventually send price toward $36. His chart actually extends as high as $36.77, while an intermediate Fibonacci target sits near $18.23.
That would require XRP to rise by roughly 24 times from current levels.
Dark Defender bases the call partly on a previous forecast he says worked almost exactly as planned. In August 2024, he calculated a Wave 1 target of $3.3939. XRP later traded through that region during its 2025 advance, reaching a high around $3.66.
Now he believes Wave 2 has ended and the much larger Wave 3 is beginning.
The weekly chart divides XRP’s longer-term structure into three major Elliott Waves.
Wave 1 begins from the depressed 2024 price region and ends during the strong advance into late 2024 and 2025.
After that came Wave 2.
Source: X/@DefendDark
Rather than being one simple decline, Dark Defender labels the correction as a five-wave move inside a broad descending structure. XRP eventually fell toward the $1 area before recovering back above $1.50.
The analyst now considers that corrective phase complete.
His green projection marks Wave 3, traditionally the strongest portion of a five-wave Elliott Wave sequence.
That projection is anything but modest.
Dark Defender marks two large Fibonacci extension levels:
His tweet simplifies the upper scenario to a $36 target.
That means he is not looking for XRP to merely revisit its old highs around $3.50. His thesis requires an entirely new valuation regime for the token.
Dark Defender also highlights volume.
Two green circles on the bottom of his chart compare the current period with late 2024, before XRP’s previous major advance.
Volume had become unusually quiet before Wave 1 started. It then expanded dramatically as the XRP price moved higher.
The analyst believes something similar is developing now.
Recent weekly volume remains far below the extreme levels reached during the previous rally, but activity has begun increasing from a very low base.
His argument is that the current setup resembles the period immediately before XRP’s earlier expansion.
There is some logic to watching that comparison. Large moves generally need increasing participation, and a move out of a long consolidation accompanied by stronger volume carries more weight than one occurring on declining activity.
But matching one historical volume pattern does not mean the price response must be proportional.
That becomes particularly important when the target is $36.
The chart itself shows how much work XRP still has to do.
XRP is currently around $1.53 and is approaching the weekly Ichimoku cloud visible around roughly $1.50-$2.10.
That region could act as resistance.
Beyond it, XRP would still need to reclaim $2, move through its former highs, and decisively clear the $3-$3.66 area before the market could even begin entering genuine price discovery.
Those are not minor steps.
Dark Defender’s Wave 3 scenario assumes XRP will eventually break through all of them and accelerate far beyond its previous record.
The setup may become much more convincing if XRP clears the cloud and its old highs with expanding weekly volume. At $1.50, however, the $36 target remains very distant.
Read also: We Asked 3 AI Models If XRP Can Reach $10 Before 2028
There is also a real event behind Dark Defender’s reference to “the bell for XRP” ringing at Nasdaq.
The connection is Evernorth, a Ripple-backed company created around an XRP treasury strategy.
Evernorth plans to become publicly traded through a merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II. If the transaction closes and the remaining conditions are satisfied, the combined company is expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN. SEC filings state that the business will hold a strategic XRP treasury and participate in the XRP ecosystem. Ripple itself contributed about 126.8 million XRP to the company as part of the transaction.
Evernorth clears its shareholder vote on the road to NasdaqArmada Acquisition Corp. II shareholders approved every proposal tied to the SPAC's merger with Evernorth, the meeting's inspector of elections reported at today's virtual shareholder meeting. @evernorthxrp is an XRP… pic.twitter.com/RKDchCYdwI
— BSCN (@BSCNews) September 30, 2026
The planned company is much larger than that contribution alone. Evernorth is expected to hold at least roughly 473 million XRP, and its stated strategy includes increasing XRP exposure and investing in ecosystem infrastructure.
Armada shareholders were scheduled to vote on the transaction on September 30. Reports circulating after the meeting say the merger was approved, although at the time of writing that result had not yet been confirmed through a new SEC filing or an official announcement from the companies.
So Dark Defender’s Nasdaq comment appears to refer to Evernorth rather than XRP itself being listed on Nasdaq.
If XRPN begins trading, it would give stock-market investors another indirect way to gain exposure to an XRP-focused company.
That is noteworthy, but it should not be confused with Nasdaq buying XRP or XRP itself becoming a Nasdaq-listed security.
This is where Dark Defender’s forecast becomes much harder to accept at face value.
At roughly $1.50 today, XRP would need to rise around 2,300% to reach $36.
More importantly, the implied valuation becomes enormous.
XRP has roughly 60-plus billion tokens in circulation. At $36 each, the circulating market capitalization would move well beyond $2 trillion. Using XRP’s full 100 billion maximum supply would imply a fully diluted value around $3.6 trillion.
That does not make the target mathematically impossible. Crypto assets can reach valuations that once appeared unrealistic, and market capitalization is not literally the amount of money that needs to enter an asset.
But it shows the scale of what Dark Defender is forecasting.
XRP would need to become one of the world’s largest financial assets, not simply have another successful altcoin rally.
A move back toward $3-$4 would already require substantial appreciation from current prices. $10 would represent a much larger repricing. Getting from there to $18 or $36 would require another level of adoption, liquidity and investor demand entirely.
The Evernorth Nasdaq development alone would not be enough to produce that.
Most of Evernorth’s XRP exposure also does not represent hundreds of millions of tokens suddenly being purchased from exchanges. Much of the treasury comes from contributed XRP, including Ripple’s stake. That limits the argument that the listing itself necessarily creates huge immediate spot-market demand.
For more crypto news and price predictions, click here.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for daily crypto updates, market insights, and expert analysis.
The post This Analyst’s XRP Price Prediction Sounds Almost Impossible appeared first on CaptainAltcoin.
