So, will Ripple token prices fizzle out and consolidate with long-term support at a lower level? Or will XRP continue to skyrocket over the next 60 days?

Here are 6 of the most current signals regarding XRP’s price. But real quick first:

As for more focused long-term accumulation holders and altcoin investors who make cyclical adjustments with the occasional swing trade to optimize their strategy: Is XRP the right place to park it for a while?

Is it too Late to Buy XRP in 2024-2025?

That’s an important question for many cryptocurrency investors looking at the top coins by market cap for opportunities to achieve their financial goals over their relevant timeframes.

Using Bitcoin as a point of comparison, RippleNet does not appear to have reached as much of its TAM (total addressable market) along its product adoption curve. For example, Bitcoin is already on Wall Street as a number of ETF products, and XRP is not.

But, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse says his company considers an XRP ETF inevitable. Meanwhile, Ripple Labs has actively explored IPO options for some time, but outside the United States, because of the costly battle against the SEC.

In addition to that gauge of XRP’s market adoption curve, the Belgium-based SWIFT cooperative is a directly relevant point of comparison.

While SWIFT processes international payment volume on the order of USD $5 trillion daily, RippleNet appears to be just getting started.

XRP tokens on the decentralized financial platform XRP Ledger facilitate something like USD $1.5 billion worth of similar transactions each day, according to data from XRP Scan.

1. XRP Stablecoin Gets Nod From NY Regulator

Last week the New York state financial regulator, the Department of Financial Services, approved a new Ripple stablecoin—RLUSD.

The issuer of XRP tokens for RippleNet launched the new product on Dec. 17. XRP token prices on crypto exchanges soared by 11% in market valuation following the regulator’s approval. They jumped from $2.38 to over $2.47 within minutes after the company’s announcement of a launch date.

Once the product was released, XRP’s price went even further by tapping a multi-week peak of over $2.7.

2. Ripple Token Technicals

Technical signals for Ripple were strong in mid-December.

From Dec. 3 – 10, XRP retraced from a high above $2.70 and consolidated above the $1.90 level. XRP’s price then fired back up to above $2.70 on Tuesday, Dec. 17. So the tokens for RippleNet appeared to have found their long-term support level for another leg up in December.

That’s impressive price performance and shows great buoyancy after what Jeff Park, chief strategist at crypto asset manager Bitwise, called, in an interview with Fortune, “one of the most violent liquidations we’ve had in the altcoin universe.”

The way Park sees it, this retracement looks like a market just stopping briefly to catch its breath: “It looks severe. But the gains were even more astronomical preceding it, and this is a little bit of an exhaustion.”

On Tuesday, Ripple’s simple and exponential moving averages across the 10-day, 20-day, 30-day, 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day periods indicated a Strong Buy recommendation, according to data from TradingView.

One potential hazard for the XRP army is a large amount of whale-sized transfers to exchanges. That makes the potentially available supply more liquid and could signal selling intent by big players.

A November surge of whale transfers doubled Binance’s XRP whale inflows since late October. The last time this metric was this high in Mar. 2024, it preceded a 3-month slide for the asset.

3. Strong Business Model, America’s ‘Secret’ Weapon?

This fundamental evaluation of Ripple’s long-term future prospects as a payments business cannot be understated. Ripple maintains a SaaS product that is so good with a business and team around it that are so capable that RippleNet could be the US’s secret weapon to maintain global financial hegemony in the face of a fading dollar.

That’s why popular digital asset researcher X Anderson, in a recent post, called XRP “a strategic weapon for the US.”

Main reasons why Ripple along with XRP is a strategic weapon for the US:

Ripple has built a next-generation B2B cross-border payments system controlled by a US company.

RLUSD will be able to expand the usage of USD around the world, especially for financial institutions…

— Anders (@X__Anderson) December 2, 2024

“Ripple has built a next-generation B2B cross-border payments system controlled by a US company,” Anderson wrote. “Ripple holds roughly 45% of all XRP, meaning a US-based company is the largest holder of XRP.”

4. XRP Ledger Daily TXs Trending Up

For another fundamental analysis, the daily transaction volume on the XRP Ledger for decentralized finance may be cause for trader/investor bullishness into January.

Total payments from one account to another increased from 0.73 million daily on Sept. 17 to 1.4 million daily on Dec. 16, nearly doubling in three months’ time.

Accordingly, payment volume in XRP tokens using the XRP Ledger increased over the same period, from 762 million to 1.99 billion.

Daily active accounts on XRP Ledger have also kept pace with the appreciating crypto spot exchange price for the Ripple token. Daily unique senders rose to over 105K on Dec. 2.

The previous record was just a touch over 50K each of the three times this metric ever came anything close to this month’s all-time high. Daily new account activation figures are also bullish.

5. Trump Effect, Ripple SEC Lawsuit Dust Settles

The outgoing Biden administration’s war on cryptocurrency via a very aggressive SEC is at an end with the incoming second one for New York City and cable television’s Donald Trump. The president-elect’s appointment of Peter Thiel’s PayPal apprentice, David Sacks, to be his crypto and AI czar is more proof the new White House will be friendly and supportive of cryptocurrencies like XRP.

In a November tweet, Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty stated that Ripple’s defense against the SEC in US court “provided the blueprint to defeat Gary Gensler’s inexplicable war on crypto.”

During a recent 60 Minutes interview, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said his company recently launched a new crypto-focused US super PAC named Fairshake because of the SEC’s “war on crypto.”

Its influence on policymakers will come with the gravitas of its legal victories, its international business partnerships with foreign governments and financial institutions, and its vast honeypot of financial resources and clearly no shortage of cash—not even through a prolonged and expensive SEC battle happening at the same time as a severe cyclical bear market for the crypto industry.

6. Dollar and Bitcoin Macro Cycles

The dollar is in an inflationary, low-interest rate cycle for the time being. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is in its historical 12 – 18-month bullish price adjustment phase following a 50% supply cut every four years. This quadrennial’s “halving” occurred on April 20, 2024.

As a result, XRP’s price is caught up in a very broad, macro-cycle, multi-month financial updraft that, in many previous cycles, has dramatically increased the daily market exchange rate for altcoins like XRP.

#XRP is not dumping, it’s a whole market thing. Triggered by #BTC dump.

Fundamentals are very strong for XRP, if you’re a holder, my gut is telling me it will hit $5 by Feb 2025. All this is noise.

Not Financial Advice. I am not qualified to give any advice. pic.twitter.com/33dtboWwRl

— Vincent Van Code (@vincent_vancode) December 5, 2024

An AI startup founder and Ripple investor who goes by Vincent Van Code on X recently pointed to a $5 target level for XRP’s price by February.

Just as Ripple’s price began to retrace in early December, Van Code wrote, “Fundamentals are very strong for XRP, if you’re a holder, my gut is telling me it will hit $5 by Feb 2025. All this is noise.”