XRP price prediction 2019: To the moon or to the depths of the abyss?

XRP seems to be doing well for itself ever since it overtook Ethereum [ETH] to become the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world [by market cap].

Ripple, on the other hand, has also performed splendidly, considering its partnerships with a plethora of banks and FIs around the world. Ripple wants to build an ecosystem on the RippleNet for remittance and cross-border payments, and it plans on doing the same by leveraging the cryptocurrency XRP.

In the long-term, Ripple will emerge as a winner and along with it will rise XRP, considering the developments going on Japan’s SBI Group and SBI Holdings, which are planning to disrupt and reshape the whole of Japan’s payments industry with XRP as a tool to accomplish it.

The road so far:

2017

The year 2017 was the year of the bulls which projected the prices of every cryptocurrency in the ecosystem to plummet to unfathomable heights. XRP attained a price of $3.349 per token and the market cap at this point reached $145 billion on January 04, 2018, right after Bitcoin hit its peak on December 17, 2017.

2018

Most analysts in the market expected Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency to pump higher. While some people in the XRP community believed that the price will shoot up from here to $10, others were mesmerized by BearableGuy123, Ripple and XRP’s very own jester, who put out riddles, and people interpreted the price of XRP to reach an appalling $589 by the end of 2018.

Most of the people in the community thought that it would be possible due to Ripple’s payment solution xRapid, which leverages XRP as a bridge currency to perform cross-border payments.

Brad Garlinghose, the CEO of Ripple, said in one of his interviews:

“I’ve publicly stated that by the end of this year I have confidence that major banks will use xRapid as a liquidity tool, this calendar year. By the end of next year I would certainly hope we would see in the order of magnitude of dozens.”

This statement of Brad Garlinghouse made people believe in the jester.

Another reason why people expected the price to reach $589 or “$5.89” was due to Ripple’s plan to launch “Cobalt” which, according to the Ripple, would drastically decrease the already fast transaction time.

People in the community speculated that since Cobalt’s mass number is 58.9, the price could inadvertently reach $589 or $58.9 or $5.89 by the end of the year.

As the year 2018 came to an end, some people admitted that it wouldn’t happen, while others still believed that $589 is attainable.

There were some massive improvements and updates that the company Ripple had provided, like the signing up of 200+ banks. More than five banks across the world have started using the xRapid payment solution now. MercuryFX successfully transferred money across the border using xRapid recently.

2019

Apart from the above, R3’s Corda Network was turned on, which will use XRP as a settlement currency. R3 announced that it had crossed more than 280+ partnerships, which included a couple of central banks.

SBI Holdings, a consortium of banks across Japan, announced a partnership with R3 and set-up a joint venture to improve Japan’s payment industry.

What to expect?

The XRP community speculates that the partnership between SBI Holdings, R3, and Ripple puts XRP smack in the middle of  SBI CEO’s [Yoshitaka Kitao] plans to launch XRP across Japan in efforts to reshape and restructure their payment system before the Osaka Expo 2025.

Technicals

Daily Chart

The chart below shows the year 2018 so far and how the cryptocurrency XRP has performed over the year 2018. A strong downtrend can be seen hanging over the XRP daily price chart that extends from January of 2018 till date.

The one-day chart shows the formation of two distinct falling wedges for XRP as seen in the chart above. Falling wedges are usually trend reversal patterns that indicate a breakout depending on where there are formed.

The first wedge spanned 256 days and the breakout that occurred pushed the prices by 192% i.e., the prices shot up from $0.26 to $0.76. The second wedge has so far ranged for 141 days and a breakout might happen at any moment. There is, however, a possibility of prices moving sideways for a couple more days.

If the breakout happens, it could drastically increase the price of XRP to two possible levels, the first $0.5798, and the other level, a bit higher than before, $0.7971, which is the highest point of the wedge.

Weekly Chart

The longer time-frame for XRP shows a very different scenario as the prices are forming a descending triangle pattern, and as per the definition, it is a bearish signal.

The volume for the weekly chart also shows a declining trend, further substantiating the descending triangle pattern. The prices might dip in the upcoming days as the price might dip a little lower, possibly to the $0.18 to $0.14 range.

This range could be the capitulation range and there is a probability that the bull run might begin after the weak hands get out of the market.

Market Sentiment

The Ripple and XRP community is particularly fond of XRP and are expecting the prices to the moon due to the success of xRapid. As per recent unfoldings, many banks have started using xRapid.

Moreover, SBI Holdings has partnered with Ripple and R3 and is on a plan to disrupt the Japanese payment industry and simultaneously reshape the payments infrastructure. SBI plans to leverage XRP to make it happen and the CEO of SBI, Yoshitaka Kitao has very ambitious plans to make that happen by 2025.

Considering all the above facts, it can be said that the price of XRP could very well disregard the Technical Analysis and shoot up higher, breaking all the resistance points and maybe even crossing the previous highs at $3.65 when xRapid goes into full effect, or when FIs and Corporate players start using Corda.