XRP is currently trading around $1.33, down by about 64% from its all-time high of $3.65 reached in July 2025. The irony is that the cryptocurrency has spent the past several months shedding value when Ripple, the company behind its primary use case, has been executing developments at a pace that few technology companies in any sector can match.
A crypto pundit on X has pointed to what could be the disconnect. According to the pundit, the heavy lifting behind XRP’s development is already complete, yet the market has not reflected it in price.
Ripple’s Years Of Work May Already Be Complete
According to the pundit’s post, Ripple currently holds more than 75 regulatory licenses across the world’s major financial markets. The pundit’s contention is that obtaining even half of those licenses from scratch would require between eight and twelve years of sustained effort, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in legal and compliance resources. “That development phase has already taken place,” the pundit wrote. “The market has not yet priced this in.”
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Ripple has one of the most extensive compliance footprints in the crypto industry, with regulatory licenses across major financial hubs, including Europe, the UK, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and North America.
For instance, Ripple has secured both an Electronic Money Institution license and crypto-asset registration from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. In wider Europe, Ripple secured full approval of its EMI license in Luxembourg, granting it passporting rights that allow it to operate in all 27 EU member states under a single authorization.
On the US front, the DTCC’s National Securities Clearing Corporation directory added Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC, the prime brokerage arm Ripple acquired for $1.25 billion, with operational clearing credentials.
The DTCC also filed patents in 2025 explicitly naming Ripple and XRP as compatible infrastructure for its tokenized finance framework. For context, the DTCC is the backbone of the entire US securities market.
The Market Still Isn’t Pricing In Utility
Despite that progress with Ripple, XRP’s price action has been on a different path since its 2025 peak. The cryptocurrency is now struggling to break above $1.40, with repeated rejections in the mid-$1.30s showing that buyers are not yet willing to push it into a sustained uptrend.
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The issue comes down to how markets assign value. Infrastructure alone does not immediately translate into price appreciation unless it drives clear and consistent demand for the asset itself.
The broader cryptocurrency market also experienced capital outflows throughout February and March 2026, mostly due to trade tariffs introduced by the Trump administration and escalating military pressure in the Middle East. This is reflected through outflows from spot crypto ETFs, and inflows are only starting to creep back in the past few days.
The CLARITY Act Senate Banking Committee markup is targeted for the second half of April 2026, and it could be the final straw that sees the XRP price reflecting its development. This bill would permanently classify XRP as a digital commodity under federal law and may lead to billions in new ETF inflows.
Featured image from Pxfuel, chart from Tradingview.com
