Geoffrey Kendrick, the global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, recently issued an extremely bullish price prediction for XRP .
Kendrick' bullish prediction is driven by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropping its appeal against Ripple and the approval of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) linked to XRP.
Understanding Ripple-SEC legal saga
It was in August this year that the years-long legal battle between the SEC and Ripple finally got over.
Ripple is a blockchain and crypto company that uses XRP to facilitate fast and economical cross-border transactions.
The SEC sued Ripple and top executives in December 2020 for the alleged unregistered sale of securities by selling XRP tokens.
Ripple counterargued that XRP is a digital currency, not a security.
Related: SEC and Ripple case is officially over
The legal battle, which shook the crypto industry, reached a conclusion in a court in July 2023 that Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP on crypto exchanges did not constitute securities transactions.
However, Ripple's sale of XRP tokens to institutional players was found to be a violation of securities by the court.
Seen as a partial victory for Ripple, the SEC appealed against the decision and continued to battle it out in the court.
After a contentious legal drama, the regulator dropped its appeal against the crypto company in August this year.
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XRP ETFs
Several leading companies, like Franklin Templeton, Canary, 21Shares, Bitwise, and Greyscale, launched spot XRP ETFs in the U.S. soon after.
As per the on-chain analysis platform SoSoValue , spot XRP ETFs have accumulated a total new inflow of $1.14 billion as of Dec. 26.
Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick predicts XRP price in 2026
Given such positive developments, Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick predicted that XRP will hit a price target of $8 in 2026.
Regulatory clarity around XRP as a financial asset and the progress on ETFs linked to the cryptocurrency have boosted its price projection, as per the Wall Street analyst.
At the time of writing, XRP was exchanging hands at $1.86. So, Kendrick is projecting a price jump of 330% from its current price.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Dec 29, 2025, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
