There’s a lot of noise in the XRP space right now. Bearish traders pointing at the 60% drawdown from the July 2025 peak. Bulls screaming about institutional adoption. And somewhere in the middle, most retail investors are just trying to figure out whether to hold, buy more, or walk away.

John Squire — known on X as @TheCryptoSquire — is one of the more followed voices in the XRP community. He covers Ripple, regulatory developments, and market intelligence, and his XRP price prediction takes have generated serious attention over the past year. If you’ve been following his posts, you already know he’s not someone who hedges everything into irrelevance. He makes real calls, backs them with data, and isn’t afraid to talk about numbers that most analysts won’t touch publicly.

This article breaks down his key positions on XRP price prediction, layers in current market data, and tries to give you an honest picture of where things actually stand — the upside, the downside, and what has to happen for either scenario to play out.

Where XRP Stands Right Now

Before we talk about where XRP is going, let’s be clear about where it is. As of June 2026, XRP is trading around $1.10 to $1.30, well below the high of $3.65 it hit in July 2025. That peak came on the back of genuine catalysts — anticipation around the CLARITY Act, the SEC case finally getting resolved, and the launch of spot XRP ETFs in November 2025.

Those ETFs are real. Seven US spot XRP ETFs launched between late 2025 and early 2026, pulling in over $1.29 billion in net inflows. Goldman Sachs holds more than $153 million in XRP ETF exposure. These are not small numbers. And yet the XRP price prediction crowd is still arguing about whether $3 is realistic for year-end.

That gap between the institutional story and the token price is the central tension in every serious XRP price prediction right now.

John Squire’s Core Thesis on XRP Price Prediction

John Squire’s view on XRP price prediction isn’t built around hype. His framework centers on infrastructure and utility — what the XRP Ledger is actually being used for, and what happens to price when that usage scales.

His most widely shared XRP price prediction came in August 2025, when he highlighted a Google Gemini projection showing XRP could reach $134.50 if the XRP Ledger captured 20% of the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market by 2026. The math behind that projection: XRPL RWA value at $14 billion (representing 20% of a $70 billion market), a market cap projection of $7.99 trillion, and a resulting XRP price prediction of $134.50 per token.

That number sounds extreme. And Squire acknowledged as much — he wasn’t presenting it as a baseline forecast. He was using it to make a structural point: if you understand what XRPL could become as settlement infrastructure for tokenized assets, the current XRP price prediction range most analysts cite doesn’t account for that upside at all.

His broader XRP price prediction thesis rests on three pillars:

One — Infrastructure over speculation. Squire consistently argues that most XRP price prediction models are looking at the wrong thing. The price will follow the infrastructure build-out, not the other way around. Right now, institutions are using XRPL for real-world financial products, settlement, and compliance-sensitive workflows. That usage is growing quietly while the price is trading sideways.

Two — The $27,000 scenario exists. In April 2026, Squire shared a post referencing a projection that XRP could eventually reach $27,000 under conditions involving massive institutional liquidity flows, deep integration into global financial systems, and a supply shock from ETF absorption and institutional custody. His XRP price prediction framing here was clear — this is not near-term, this is not guaranteed, but the structural logic is not as crazy as it sounds if you map out the math at global payment settlement scale.

Three — Regulatory momentum changes everything. Squire tracks the CLARITY Act closely and has flagged it as the most important catalyst for XRP price prediction near-term.He said the Committee moved quickly on the markup for the CLARITY Act in June 2026, which he dubbed a “watch closely” moment for XRP holders. Regulatory clarity removes a compliance hurdle that has kept institutional allocators on the sidelines.

What the Broader Market Says About XRP Price Prediction

Outside of Squire’s takes, here’s what the current analyst landscape looks like for XRP price prediction across different timeframes.

2026: Forecasts range significantly. Conservative analysts put year-end XRP price prediction targets between $1.90 and $2.50. Mid-range projections from sources like Changelly suggest around $2.06 to $2.22. More bullish analysts — including some AI models — put the XRP price prediction for 2026 between $3 and $10, with the high end requiring ETF inflows to keep accelerating and the CLARITY Act to pass.

2027–2028: The XRP price prediction picture here depends almost entirely on whether XRPL cements its role as institutional infrastructure. The bull case for 2027 puts XRP in the $6 to $12 range. The bear case is between $0.23 and $2.37, representing situations where the overall market worsens or rival payment methods become popular.

2030 – Standard Chartered has projected an XRP price of $28 in 2030, tied to milestones in institutional adoption. Coinfomania’s model puts the average at $22.58 with highs near $29. In most mainstream institutional scenarios, the consensus on XRP price prediction for 2030 is somewhere in the range of $12 to $29.

These are wide ranges. That’s not analyst laziness — it reflects genuine uncertainty about regulatory outcomes, ETF trajectory, and how quickly global banks actually move.

What Has to Happen for the Bullish XRP Price Prediction to Play Out

The bulls have a clear story. For any aggressive XRP price prediction to come true, you need several things to align.

ETF inflows need to keep growing. Seven ETFs launched with $1.29 billion in inflows. JPMorgan projects $4 to $8.4 billion in first-year flows if institutional demand holds. If those numbers materialize, supply tightens considerably — ETFs have already pulled over 500 million XRP off the open market.

XRPL has to become real RWA infrastructure. Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz has talked about XRPL shifting toward real-world asset tokenization. J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Ondo Finance have run pilots on XRPL. If that scales from pilot to institutional standard, the demand for XRP as a settlement layer changes the entire XRP price prediction equation.

Regulatory clarity needs to land. The CLARITY Act fast-track Squire flagged in June 2026 matters enormously. If it passes, XRP gets formally classified as a non-security commodity. That removes the last major compliance barrier for institutional allocators who have been watching from the sidelines.

The quantum resistance roadmap adds credibility. In April 2026, Ripple announced a four-phase plan to make the XRP Ledger quantum-resistant by 2028. Squire flagged this as a significant institutional credibility builder. Any institution thinking about using XRPL for long-term settlement infrastructure cares deeply about cryptographic security. Being the first major crypto asset to formally address quantum threats is not a small differentiator.

The Honest Downside for XRP Price Prediction

Squire isn’t a permanent bull. He asks hard questions too — including his September 2025 post flagging Ripple’s monthly 1 billion XRP escrow release and wondering openly whether the market should be worried about the supply pressure.

That’s a legitimate concern in any XRP price prediction model. Ripple releases 1 billion XRP from escrow every month. While a substantial portion gets re-escrowed, the predictable release schedule is a structural headwind that bears will always point to.

Other risks any realistic XRP price prediction needs to account for:

If the CLARITY Act stalls — which it could — XRP loses its most Ripple-specific catalyst and goes back to just moving with Bitcoin. Without that tailwind, the XRP price prediction for the rest of 2026 probably ranges between $1.50 and $2.50 at best.

Stablecoins and competing payment rails are gaining ground. If global banks go deeper into SWIFT’s blockchain systems or CBDC-based settlement rather than XRPL, the core utility narrative weakens. That doesn’t kill XRP, but it compresses the ceiling on any XRP price prediction that relies on dominant cross-border market share.

And Bitcoin is still the market leader. In a risk-off environment, capital flows to Bitcoin first. Any macro shock — rate hikes, geopolitical flare-up, crypto regulatory crackdown in major markets — could drag XRP back toward $0.80 to $1.00 regardless of how strong the fundamentals story is.

How to Actually Think About XRP Price Prediction Right Now

John Squire’s value as a commentator on XRP price prediction isn’t that he gives you a number and tells you to act on it. He’s explicit: not financial advice. His value is that he forces you to think about the right framework.

Are you evaluating XRP based on short-term price momentum? Then you’re looking at chart patterns, RSI levels, and Bitcoin’s macro direction. The current XRP price prediction on that basis is fairly range-bound between $1.00 and $2.50 for the near term.

Or are you evaluating XRP as infrastructure for the future of global financial settlement? Then the XRP price prediction conversation is entirely different. At that scale, the current price either looks like an extraordinary opportunity or the beginning of a very long wait — depending on how quickly the institutional adoption story actually materializes.

That’s the core tension Squire keeps coming back to in his XRP price prediction commentary: the market is pricing XRP like a speculative asset when the bull case is that it becomes something much more foundational to how money moves globally.

Final Thoughts

The XRP price prediction space is full of people yelling numbers with no real framework behind them. John Squire cuts through a lot of that by focusing on what actually drives the asset — regulatory developments, infrastructure adoption, institutional flows, and supply dynamics.

His most aggressive XRP price prediction scenarios ($134.50 on RWA capture, $27,000 on global liquidity integration) are not near-term trading targets. They’re structural thought experiments that reveal the size of the opportunity if everything goes right. Most investments don’t go perfectly right. XRP has survived a multi-year SEC lawsuit, multiple bear markets, and multiple rounds of “XRP is dead” takes. It’s still here, and institutional adoption is now measurably real.

Whether the XRP price prediction plays out in two years or ten years — or doesn’t reach those levels at all — depends on factors still in motion. What’s not debatable is that the environment heading into the second half of 2026 looks more favorable for XRP than it has in years. The lawsuit is settled. The ETFs are live. The regulatory window is open.

Whether that’s enough to move the needle on XRP price prediction in the near term is the question. And the honest answer is: nobody knows for certain — including John Squire. What he does know, and what’s worth paying attention to, is the direction of the story. And right now, the direction looks better than the price suggests.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Crypto markets are highly volatile. Always do your own research before making any investment decision.