Ripple has outlined a new direction for the XRP Ledger (XRPL), placing privacy, efficiency, and institutional readiness at the center of its strategy. The announcement has revived one of the most ambitious XRP price forecasts in the community, a long‑term projection of $20,000 per token.
The discussion began after RippleX Senior Director of Engineering, J. Ayo Akinyele, shared updates on his team’s work in a recent Ripple Insights article. Akinyele revealed that Ripple is developing tools designed to support private yet regulatory‑compliant transactions.
Over the next year, the company plans to implement zero‑knowledge proofs, which would allow financial institutions to process sensitive data more securely while maintaining performance and scalability.
Steingraber’s Bold Valuation Model
The renewed focus on privacy has drawn attention back to a valuation model introduced in 2022 by game developer and XRP community analyst Chad Steingraber. In his analysis, Steingraber described a framework that could theoretically drive XRP toward a $20,000 price point, relying on three key dynamics: demand, market perception, and scarcity.
This is where it gets interesting…
XRP https://t.co/2L9UgxJ17jpic.twitter.com/g8Wxz5v6Dx
— Chad Steingraber (@ChadSteingraber) October 2, 2025
First, he highlighted demand as the central force behind value creation. In his view, assets that lack meaningful demand are undervalued, while surging demand can result in rapid price appreciation.
Second, he pointed to how shifts in market perception can elevate valuations without necessarily requiring new inflows of capital, a dynamic he said applies broadly across financial markets.
Finally, he emphasized scarcity, noting that XRP has a capped supply of under 100 billion tokens and is subject to gradual deflation, as a small amount is destroyed with every transaction.
Steingraber argued that traditional market capitalization figures do not always reflect true investment in an asset. At the time of his model, XRP’s reported market capitalization was around $18 billion, but he maintained that this overstated real exposure due to thin trading volumes and retail‑driven activity.
He asserted that circulating supply and available liquidity, rather than theoretical market‑cap numbers, ultimately determine price.
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Why Privacy Matters for Institutions
Building on this framework, Steingraber predicted that major banks and payment providers would not rely on public exchanges or standard liquidity tools. Instead, he suggested they would adopt private ledgers while holding XRP as a reserve asset.
According to his model, banks could issue internal digital instruments backed by XRP reserves, using them for customer balances and interbank transfers.
He further projected that liquidity providers would play a key role by accumulating large pools of XRP to facilitate settlement between institutions. In this scenario, competition among major financial players to secure XRP would significantly reduce available supply on public markets.
Steingraber also pointed to the permanent loss of some XRP, including tokens locked in inaccessible accounts, as a factor that compounds scarcity. He estimated that only about 20 billion tokens are available on exchanges, meaning institutional accumulation could quickly drain order books and accelerate price increases.
Linking Ripple’s Strategy to Price Theories
Ripple’s current focus on integrating zero‑knowledge proofs aligns with the type of privacy and compliance features that Steingraber’s model assumes institutions will require. For proponents of his $20,000 projection, the company’s technology roadmap offers support for the idea that banks and large‑scale payment systems may adopt XRPL for settlement.
While most analysts view a $20,000 valuation as highly speculative, the intersection of Ripple’s privacy initiatives with Steingraber’s institutional demand thesis has kept the debate alive within the XRP community. At minimum, the company’s efforts to expand privacy and scalability are seen as essential steps in preparing the ledger for broader enterprise use.
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