According to Ripple's Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz, the demand from banks for high XRP prices is evident. As early as eight years ago, Schwartz published a widely-read post on Kora that clearly articulated this logic.
This viewpoint is not complex: if a bank needs to transfer one billion dollars and the trading price of XRP is only five cents, purchasing such a large amount of XRP during the transaction would lead to significant price fluctuations, resulting in slippage that makes the entire transaction impractical.
A higher market capitalization means that the same transaction will have little impact on the price. Therefore, banks not only accept high XRP prices but also see them as a necessity.
From the perspective of a $33 trillion target, Ripple's recent initiatives make more sense in this context. The team has expanded its stablecoin RLUSD on the XRP ledger, targeting the $33 trillion stablecoin market. As Levi pointed out in his analysis, every RLUSD transaction conducted on XRPL requires XRP as a transaction fee.
The launch of this stablecoin eliminates the slippage problem faced by banks while still placing XRP at the core of every transaction. The strategy Schwartz articulated years ago began with small currency corridors, such as trades between the Euro and the Indian Rupee, which are low-margin and inefficient markets, and then gradually expanded to large currencies that trade trillions daily.
It is noteworthy that since Schwartz first made this argument, the infrastructure has indeed begun to take shape. Ripple received conditional approval for a national trust bank charter from the OCC in December 2025, while Mastercard included Ripple in its global cryptocurrency partner program with 85 companies on March 11, 2023, alongside partners like Binance, PayPal, Circle, and Gemini. This shift indicates the confidence of Ripple's leadership in future developments.
Schwartz's argument has always been reasonable, with the key being whether the various elements in the real world can integrate smoothly. By 2026, these elements are beginning to take shape.
The long-term growth of XRP may depend on the adoption of global payments, institutional partnerships, and the widespread use of Ripple's blockchain infrastructure. Although XRP's role in cross-border payments is gradually revealing its investment potential and institutional adoption is increasing, price volatility and regulatory risks remain challenges that cannot be ignored.