XRP surged 9.3% on Monday, touching an intraday high of $1.29, after the United States and Iran reached a deal that eased geopolitical tensions across the Middle East. The token traded at $1.22 at press time, up 3.25% over the past day. Bitcoin climbed to around $65,300 following the development, while oil prices dropped more than 3% and gold gained nearly 2% — a broad risk-on shift that lifted crypto along with traditional markets.
Whale wallets swell
Wallets holding at least 1 million XRP now control 74.1% of the token's supply, according to on-chain data. Over the past six months, those large holders added roughly 1.53 billion tokens — a steady accumulation pattern that suggests deep-pocketed investors aren't fazed by the market's recent choppiness. The concentration has been growing even as retail sentiment turned bearish.
Extreme pessimism, then a bounce
Santiment, the analytics firm, noted that periods of extreme pessimism have often preceded strong price rebounds for XRP. The latest rally fits that pattern: social sentiment around the token had soured in the weeks before Monday's jump, and the geopolitical catalyst gave sidelined buyers a reason to step in.
A former Goldman analyst's long shot
Dom Kwok, co-founder of EasyA and a former Goldman Sachs analyst, set a long-term target of $1,000 for XRP by 2030. Kwok compares blockchains to the early internet and argues that value can accrue to XRP itself as applications build on the XRP Ledger. He pointed out that only 7% of the world currently owns crypto and that newcomers are priced out of Bitcoin and Ethereum but not XRP. Achieving the $1,000 target within four years would require XRP to reach a market capitalization exceeding $60 trillion — a figure larger than the entire global economy today, making the call a massive outlier even by crypto standards.
Ripple's institutional foundation
Ripple's expanding institutional payment network and growing tokenization initiatives on the XRP Ledger help maintain long-term confidence among large holders. The company continues to sign partnerships for cross-border payments, and tokenized real-world assets on the XRPL have picked up steam. Whether those fundamentals can support a move to $1,000 is another question — but the whale accumulation suggests a bet that the network's utility will eventually justify a much higher valuation.
