Ripple CTO Drops Truth Bomb: XRP Price ≠ True Value – Here’s Why It Matters

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer just shattered the illusion—XRP’s market price isn’t reflecting its ‘true value.’ But what does that actually mean for traders and the crypto ecosystem?

### The Great Crypto Mirage

Market hype, whale manipulation, and good old-fashioned FOMO have decoupled XRP’s price from its underlying utility. Meanwhile, Wall Street still can’t decide if crypto is an asset class or a speculative casino.

### Why Fundamentals (Still) Matter

Blockchain adoption is growing, regulatory clarity is (slowly) emerging, and Ripple’s tech keeps gaining traction. But none of that guarantees short-term price action—ask any bagholder from the 2018 bull run.

### The Bottom Line

Until markets stop treating crypto like a roulette wheel, even ‘undervalued’ projects will keep riding the volatility rollercoaster. Pro tip: Don’t check your portfolio before breakfast.

Ripple CTO Highlights Price And Utility Disconnection

Recent price action saw XRP trade at $3 again on July 14 for the first time since February 1. This came off the back of an interesting price surge that saw XRP increase by about 25% within a short timeframe. Amidst these price movements. Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, responded to a user’s question on the social media platform X about his views on XRP reaching $3 again by expressing mixed feelings about focusing on price.

Schwartz stated that he always feels good when prices are increasing, but it’s difficult to judge the right amount of focus that should be placed on price, given how inconsistent it is with underlying progress and it doesn’t seem to correlate very much with other good things like solving real-world problems. He continued by noting that this disconnect isn’t necessarily permanent, but it is very noticeable in the short term. 

In an effort to explain how XRP’s use cases extend beyond the XRP Ledger (XRPL), Schwartz made a comparison to how Bitcoin functions beyond its native blockchain. The Ripple CTO pointed to the XRP Ledger’s ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain, where XRP is being used as a currency despite not being directly tied to XRPL transactions in that environment. According to him, this indirect usage still contributes meaningfully to the token’s utility.

“A good analogy is XRP being used as a currency on the EVM sidechain. It’s not a direct use of XRP on XRPL, but it’s still part of the utility and value of XRP as a currency,” Schwartz said.

What Does This Mean For XRP?

Basically, David Schwartz pointed out the fact that XRP’s value generation is not restricted to where it is natively hosted. This is much like how Bitcoin derives functional value across centralized exchanges, wrapped versions, and other layer-2 solutions. Therefore, XRP’s application beyond the XRP Ledger still represents a meaningful measure of its utility, even if it doesn’t currently reflect in market pricing.

Although many XRP investors are currently tied to short-term price milestones, Schwartz’s comments point to real-world usage and cross-chain adoption as better indicators of XRP’s ‘true value’ in the long term. In terms of true value, the best true value could come if XRP and the XRPL are fully adopted by banks. Interestingly, central banks are already tapping in.

At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $2.96, up by 2.2% in the past 24 hours.