Alex Carchidi, The Motley Fool

Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 6:15 AM5 min read

• Making a big investment in XRP 10 years ago was a very profitable move.

• It could be quite profitable to build up a position right now, too.

• The coin's situation now is very different from what it was in 2015, however.

• 10 stocks we like better than XRP ›

Can Ripple's native coin XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) carry an investment of $10,000 all the way to $1 million by 2035?

In crypto, crazier things have happened. In fact, if you'd put $10,000 into XRP 10 years ago, you'd now have $1.9 million. So, let's analyze the prospects of XRP holders getting those kinds of returns again during the next 10 years.

As you probably know, XRP's calling card is offering ultra‑cheap cross‑border payments and money transfers, and its target users are institutional investors and banks that hold large sums of capital.

Using XRP or a stablecoin on its chain, banks and other financial institutions can avoid currency exchange fees as well as transfer fees, not to mention slashing days off of their average turnaround times for transfers. And it's this capability that's the foundation for XRP's chances of growing tremendously in the near future.

More than 400 financial institutions already rely on Ripple's On‑Demand Liquidity channels, which move money in seconds instead of days and shave transfer costs to fractions of a cent. That utility gives the coin steady transaction demand rather than leaving it at the mercy of pure speculation to drive its price. Furthermore, Ripple has big plans for how to build out an entire financial value chain based around the XRP Ledger, and using most of the features it's developing will require users to own and transact with large volumes of XRP.

There are three key developments in particular that will pave the way for significant growth.

First, Ripple is rolling out an Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible sidechain, which is a fancy way of saying that it's developing a parallel blockchain that speaks the same smart contract language as Ethereum. In practice, that means developers can port code they already wrote for Ethereum and launch it on XRP without rewriting a single line, while transactions still clear at XRP's lightning pace. That will empower institutional clients to create sophisticated smart contracts while drawing from Ethereum's vast pool of developer talent.

Second, Ripple agreed in April to buy the prime broker Hidden Road for $1.2 billion. Hidden Road provides collateral management, trade financing, and credit intermediation, all of which are highly desirable for institutional investors. Folding those services into the XRP ecosystem gives institutional treasurers a one‑stop shop for custody, borrowing, and settlement, thereby eliminating the need to send capital on‑ and off‑chain.