Should You Buy Ripple (XRP) While It's Less Than $0.60?

The XRP cryptocurrency, more commonly known as Ripple (CRYPTO: XRP) , recently scored a big win in the courtroom . That legal albatross no longer hangs over Ripple's shoulder, which frees the underlying Ripple Labs to run its business and seek partnerships, even on U.S. soil.

But the cryptocurrency didn't skyrocket on the news. I mean, Ripple posted a 26% price gain right away, but that only made up from a plunge earlier that week. Apart from that blip, its price chart is basically a carbon copy of Bitcoin 's (CRYPTO: BTC) over the last month.

The functional coin of the RippleNet international payments system once peaked at $3.84 per coin, but now it lingers just below the $0.60 mark. Where will Ripple go from here -- and is it a good cryptocurrency to own at these modest prices?

Factors that drive cryptocurrency value

Cryptocurrencies gain value in a couple of different ways.

• Some soar or swoon based on media hype, memes going viral on social media platforms, and other forms of pure speculation. Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) is the best example of this, along with meme coins such as Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) or Dogwifhat (CRYPTO: WIF) .
• Others were built on a robust technological platform, designed to build value over time due to limited supply and rising demand. Bitcoin is the flagship of this idea with a hard-coded lifetime limit of 21 million coins . So far, 19.7 million of them have already been created, leaving room for only 6% inflation -- ever. Any increase in user demand can drive its price much higher under these circumstances.
• And then we have the coins that have other uses than simply storing monetary value in a secure digital ledger. With functions such as smart contracts , financial management tools, or ownership records for real-world assets , these cryptocurrencies are meant to provide new tools, products, and services. Widespread use of the resulting things will then boost the value of the underlying cryptocurrency.

Some coins straddle the boundaries between these categories, of course. Shiba Inu is both an innovative experiment in decentralized projects and a silly meme coin . Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA) combines high-speed execution of smart contracts with a lifetime supply cap of 45 million coins.

And then there's Ripple. There will never be more than 100 billion XRP coins on the market, and all of them were created before Ripple Labs made the currency available to the public. About 44% of that supply is held in an escrow account. Ripple Labs can control its price to some degree by holding back or doling out coins from this account.

But for the most part, Ripple Labs runs a successful payment service that provides border-crossing money transfers with minimal fees and at the drop of a hat. The Ripple coin should gain value as people around the world lean into this elegant solution for the real-world problem of slow and expensive international money transfers.

RippleNet's growing success

RippleNet is already a successful business.

The crypto-based network has partnered with local banks in dozens of countries, and it's not a list of mom-and-pop outfits. The partner list includes Spanish giant Banco Santander (NYSE: SAN) , British mega-bank Standard Chartered (OTC: SCBF.F) , and several of the largest American banks. I'm talking about Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) , both of whom have collaborated with Ripple in the past and may do so again.

The local banks help Ripple convert cash into crypto on one side of each RippleNet transaction, then back to another fiat currency on the other side. They also provide liquid assets to support the payment system, which also adds stability to its financial platform.

RippleNet's transaction volume is spiking in 2024, alongside a growing network of ledger-managing computer systems. At the same time, 80% of Japanese banks are adopting a Ripple-based system for overseas money transfers.

Long story short, Ripple Labs runs a thriving financial service with a bright future. Ripple's coin price should benefit from this sprawling activity.

Ripple's future growth prospects

I can't promise skyrocketing returns in 2024 or 2025; Ripple has delivered negative returns over the last 52 weeks while Bitcoin doubled in price. And that's in a period of highly publicized courtroom success, which should have boosted that chart. There's just no telling what Ripple -- or any cryptocurrency, really -- will do in the short term.

But it should almost certainly rise in the long run. The legal wrangling is over, amounting to a $125 million slap on RippleNet's billionaire wrist. The payment system is thriving. I'm told that Ripple Labs might even join the stock market eventually.

So yes, I'm pretty sure that Ripple prices below $0.60 will be remembered as a money-making opportunity. It's one of my favorite cryptocurrencies, and I highly recommend picking up a few digital coins on the cheap.

Bank of America is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin, Cardano, and Ripple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bank of America, Bitcoin, Cardano, JPMorgan Chase, and Ripple. The Motley Fool recommends Standard Chartered. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .