The crypto market has been going through a consolidation phase since the beginning of the year, but Brad Garlinghouse does not seem concerned. The Ripple CEO has made several high-profile appearances in recent months at Davos, on Fox Business, and across various specialized podcasts to hammer home a single message: XRP<\/a> is structurally undervalued<\/strong>, and 2026 will be the year when fundamentals finally speak for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is hard to ignore these statements when they are backed by concrete figures. With over $2.8 billion in daily volume<\/strong> in mid-April and reclaiming the fourth spot globally at the expense of BNB<\/a>, XRP is regaining a form of institutional legitimacy that even its harshest critics struggle to dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Garlinghouse has never shied away from bold claims, but this one is worth a closer look: XRP could surpass Ethereum in market capitalization. For this scenario to materialize, the token<\/a> would need to triple from its current levels and break through the $4.60<\/strong> mark, which is still a significant gap from the current $1.37<\/strong>, currently retracing from its July 2025 ATH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The underlying argument is highly significant. While Ethereum carries the entire DeFi, NFT<\/a>, and smart contract ecosystem on its shoulders, XRP focuses on a single use case: instant and low-cost cross-border payments<\/strong>. This specialization is both its greatest strength and its main limitation. It is a strength because it addresses a real-world problem that banks and payment corridors have been trying to solve for decades. It is a limitation because the addressable market, although massive, remains more confined than that of a general-purpose platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What changes the game in 2026 is the absorption of $1.3 billion in tokenized assets (RWAs)<\/strong> on the XRP Ledger<\/a> network in just a few weeks. This figure is far from anecdotal: it proves that institutions are starting to use the infrastructure, rather than merely speculating on the token.<\/p>\n\n\n\n