Ripple Price Prediction 2026: Can XRP Recover After Market Cap Plunges Below $116 Billion?

XRP's valuation just got a reality check—hard.

The $116 Billion Question

Ripple's market cap tumbles below that psychological threshold, leaving investors scrambling. The once-darling of cross-border payments now faces a brutal test of its core narrative. Can utility outlast the sentiment shift?

Anatomy of a Slide

Forget vague 'market conditions.' This drop cuts straight to the heart of adoption timelines and regulatory overhangs that still linger like bad debt. Every delay in real-world use cases gets priced in—immediately and mercilessly.

The 2026 Comeback Playbook

Recovery hinges on three brutal factors: banking partnerships moving from press releases to live corridors, the SEC's legal shadow finally lifting, and XRP actually being used for something other than speculation. It's a tall order in a market that rewards the next shiny thing.

Betting Against the Herd

While traders chase the latest meme coin, a contrarian wager emerges. If Ripple's infrastructure bets pay off, today's price looks like a fire sale. If not, it's just another digital asset learning that in crypto, 'long-term' often means 'until next quarter's earnings miss.'

The path back to glory is paved with more than just hope and technical charts. It requires the one thing finance hates most: patience.

Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is trading at a value of close to $1.90 and its market capital is approximately $117B. Previously, XRP has gained substantial attention owing to its banking integrations, speed in settlement and regulatory transparency. That formed one of the most significant initial spikes in the history of large-cap altcoins and established XRP as one of the key financial assets in the payments sector.

The present-day environment appears to be different. XRP is currently under resistance against the range of $2.10-$2.30. The asset has already tried to break through those levels several times, but it has not been successful without fresh catalysts. At this massive valuation base, analysts predict sluggish and tamed performance in the years 2026 and 2027. 

Even most of the long-term forecasts indicate that XRP will not rise by more than 15% to 35% percent over the same term. Although bearish, it has less asymmetry and a later stage profile of smaller tokens which have not been fully discovered in the price.

Mutuum Finance (MUTM)

Mutuum Finance (MUTM) is one of the new tokens that are currently attracting attention of investors who owned XRP in the past. It is developing a decentralized lending protocol that has two markets which are borrowing and lending. 

The lenders in the pooled market provide assets and are issued with the mtTokens that reflect the position they hold and the amount of interest they have earned. Liquidity is unlocked by the borrowers when they use collateral at specified loan-to-value ratios. In the direct matching market, the borrowing is done on the same terms but without recourse to common liquidity.

The initial distribution of Mutuum Finance was 2025, which was distributed at a price of $0.01. The token now sits at $0.04 in Phase 7. The project has already collected $19.9M and added 18,900 holders onboard. The total quantity of tokens sold out of the 4B supply is 830M. Out of that delivery, 1.82B tokens or 45.5% are subject to early access.  The price will be introduced at $0.06 that puts the Phase 1 participants in a position that will reflect a 500% increase in their price since the time they join.

Why MUTM is Viewed as Early XRP 

Analysts have discussed three reasons why certain investors feel that Mutuum Finance may end up following the progress made by early XRP albeit in a different field of the market.

To start with, the two assets did not pursue a narrative but instead started with a foundation by building infrastructure. XRP specialised in setting systems and institutional rails. Mutuum Finance is developing lending infrastructure with collateral, liquidation and borrowing infrastructure. According to analysts, the infrastructure tokens are usually identified in the development process as opposed to realized.

Second, the two assets were pegged on adoption preceding speculation. The most active steps that XRP took included the beginning of settlement flows through banks. Analysts predict that the discovery moment of Mutuum Finance will be its V1 when borrowing, data on APY and revenue will be visible first.

Third, both assets utilized organized token models as opposed to open inflation. In its early development, XRP followed the fixed supply model. The fixed supply of 4B is distributed in phases with revenue-based acquisition and selling processes by means of mtTokens in Mutuum Finance. Analysts contend that it brings incentive excitation between token holders, lenders and borrowers.

Signals and Factors of Participation Roadmap

Phase 7 has been gaining more momentum than the previous steps. Analysts pointed to a recent whale allocation of %115K as an indication that bigger investors are placing before V1. Security has also contributed towards participation. Mutuum Finance was independently audited by Halborn Security and has a 90 out of 100 score on token scan by CertiK. 

Onboarding tools have been used to facilitate user participation. As part of the project, it has a daily 24-hour leaderboard which compensates the top contributor with $500 in MUTM. Card payment support is another area that has increased participation by reducing the barrier to participation by users who do not have crypto assets.

The majority of investors who had previously received early XRP gains are now placing funds in assets with their first utility cycle. According to the analysts, Mutuum Finance meets that description because it is in the process of approaching V1 and stabilizing the distribution phase. To investors considering what crypto to buy in 2026 positioning, the lifecycle stage difference is the primary factor that has put MUTM on the comparison lists with XRP.

For more information about Mutuum Finance (MUTM) visit the links below:

Website: https://www.mutuum.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mutuumfinance