Standard Chartered Initiates Coverage on XRP, Forecasting a Multi-Year Price Rally

The price of XRP could rise more than 500% from the current level of around $2 to $12.50 by 2028

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage on XRP, the digital asset created by Ripple, forecasting a multi-year price rally driven by payments and tokenization use cases.

The price of XRP could rise more than 500% from the current level of around $2 to $12.50 by 2028, Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, wrote in a report published Tuesday and shared with The Block.

"By the end of 2028 we see XRP's market cap overtaking Ethereum's," Kendrick said in an email to The Block while sharing the report. "That will make XRP the second largest (non-stablecoin) digital asset at that time."

Kendrick added that the "tariff mess" will be over soon and that bitcoin's solid performance during the noise "tells us a leg higher for the asset class will follow."

Reasons for XRP's expected growth

Kendrick attributes XRP's expected growth to a mix of regulatory developments, institutional adoption and expanding use cases. He points to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's recent announcement that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its appeal in the XRP case - a move Kendrick says was expected following crypto-friendly Donald Trump's election victory. Kendrick also anticipates the SEC to approve XRP spot ETFs in Q3 2025, with potential inflows of $4-8 billion in the first year.

XRP's core function - enabling cross-border and cross-currency payments - aligns with the fastest-growing use case for digital assets, similar to stablecoins, Kendrick said. He added that stablecoin transaction volumes have grown 50% annually and are expected to increase tenfold over the next four years.

Ripple is also expanding into tokenization, with initiatives such as tokenized U.S. Treasury bill funds and its USD-pegged stablecoin RLUSD.

"XRP's blockchain, the XRP Ledger [XRPL], is a payments chain and may become a tokenisation chain," Kendrick said.

He compared XRPL with Stellar, saying both blockchains have similar architecture. Stellar is currently the second-largest player in the tokenization market, and XRPL could see similar success, according to Kendrick.

As such, by the end of this year, Kendrick forecasts XRP to hit $5.50, gradually climbing to $8.00 in 2026, peaking at $12.50 in 2028 and remaining around that level through the end of 2029. These projections assume bitcoin reaching $500,000 in the same timeframe, implying XRP will maintain relative performance even with higher inflation (6% for XRP vs 0.8% for BTC).

Still, challenges remain. XRP's developer ecosystem is relatively small compared to peers, and its low-fee model limits value capture. However, Kendrick says these headwinds could be offset by the positive drivers mentioned above.

Also bullish on BTC and AVAX - but not ETH

Kendrick has been among the more bullish voices on crypto, previously forecasting a bitcoin price target of $500,000 by end-2028. Last week, he also initiated coverage on Layer 1 blockchain Avalanche, projecting that its native token AVAX could rise more than 10 times to $250 by the end of 2029. Meanwhile, Kendrick is less bullish on Ethereum, having cut his 2025 ether price target by 60% last month to $4,000.

In today's email, Kendrick described bitcoin and AVAX as "identified winners" and ether as an "identified loser."