XRP Price Prediction, will XRP’s price hit $0.96?

XRP: An overview

The rationale for building XRP was to optimize the existing financial system while addressing its bottlenecks by harnessing blockchain technology.
 

Simply put, XRP is a cryptocurrency designed to act as a digital payment network for financial transactions. It is trustless, instant, and cost-effective. Thus, the token has unveiled itself to be superior for cross-border movements.
 

First released in 2012, the Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb co-founded project replicates the traditional SWIFT payment system but leverages a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol.

In essence, the mission of Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure - RippleNet - would provide banks with fast, low-cost, and simple cross-border transactions. As a result, it could be a practicable alternative to the SWIFT system.

XRP's journey

XRP serves as a bridge to other currencies. It does not distinguish between fiat/cryptocurrency. This property makes it easy for any currency to be exchanged for another. Simply put, every currency has its own payment gateway. This property enables easy transfers across national boundaries with any currency pair on either side.

While aspiring to transform the global financial services space, XRP is open-source, permissionless, and carbon-neutral. The transactions on the XRP ledger [XRPL] typically take 3-5 seconds to settle. This makes it quite attractive for Financial institutions, users, and developers to get on board.
 

The back and forth with the SEC refrained the token from peaking with the broader market pump in November last year. With a bearish breakdown on its charts just after the inception of this year, XRP has fortunately found reliable rebounding grounds from the $0.3 baseline. 

Given the market-wide meltdown, XRP's YTD downtrend shed half its value.

Also,  recent developments in the case with SEC rekindled some hope for XRP. Progress on this front could aid the altcoin in sustaining its well-founded bull run.

With the lawsuit in progress, however, when can we expect XRP to breach its immediate ceiling on the charts? What other in-network developments could affect its value in the minds of potential buyers? 
 

Let's dive deeper into some of these happenings to formulate a better insight into XRP's plausible movement on the chart in the coming weeks/months. 

The SEC-Ripple saga

On 22 December 2020, the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs. The lawsuit stated that Ripple had raised $1.3 billion through the sale of XRPs being unregistered securities.

To sum it all up, the SEC argument implied that XRP should be considered security rather than a cryptocurrency and hence would come under their ambit to charge tax on the sale as a 'security'. 
 

Earlier this year, Judge Analisa Torres allowed Ripple the argument for a fair notice defense. The effects of this were taken positively amongst the buyers as it noted double0digit gains immediately after that.

In its recent motion, the SEC essentially took everything Ripple said about XRP to use it against them. On the other end, Ripple's argument rested on what constitutes an 'investment contract.'

What's definitely noteworthy in this summary judgment is the argument for XRP in itself being security is nowhere mentioned. On the contrary, the brief is focused on Ripple's marketing of XRP as an investment to potential buyers. 

While responding to this, Ripple has given references to the 'Blue Sky' cases to prove that an investment contract does not exist between XRP buyers and Ripple as the latter does not have any legal obligation toward the former.
 

These developments were again taken positively by the buyers as XRP registered an over 71% hike from 16-23 September. 
 

Given the substantially high correlation between the lawsuit and XRP's price, it becomes vital to factor in these updates and to keep a track of the upcoming dates.
 

Other developments

As per Ripple's quarterly market analysis report (Q2), the French luxury fashion house 'Balmain' announced a global partnership with mintNFT to introduce its brand in the metaverse. This alliance would bring the first fashion NFTs to the carbon-neutral XRPL. To top it up, iconic British performance car brand Lotus partnered with NFT PRO to bring automotive NFTs to XRPL.
 

The partnerships could make it lucrative for newer customers, automotive enthusiasts, NFT collectors, etc to create a community-driven marketplace and ultimately cause an uptick in its daily active users.
 

Additionally, Q2 also saw the launch of onAVAX.com, the first cross-chain DeFi platform for XRPL and Avalanche native assets.

Given these developments alongside its improving sentiment, XRP noted an uptick in the number of new addresses that transferred for the first time, i.e., the Network growth. Also, the Social traction and development activities saw an uptrend.