Ripple (XRP) Technicals Seem Extremely Bullish, Fundamentals Not So Much

Ripple (XRP) is trading close to the bottom of a bullish channel. It is about to complete a cypher pattern in the weeks ahead. Just a completion of this cypher pattern will see Ripple (XRP) reach the bottom of this bullish channel at around $0.60 in the weeks ahead. From there onwards, a price of $5 by July 2019 could be expected. That would be an 11x gain if I buy at the current price of $0.45. That means a $10,000 investment has the potential to yield a whopping $100,000 return on investment! If only it were that simple. Ripple (XRP) looks good from a risk/reward standpoint when you consider the technical aspects of this investment. It also appears very lucrative from a return on investment point of view. Ripple (XRP) being the third largest coin by market cap lends it further credibility. The ease of storing and transferring the cryptocurrency from wallet to exchanges (and vice versa) is an added advantage. The coin is down 86% from its all time high. Ripple (XRP) has a competent team working on the project that has wielded significant power and influence in its industry. The company is signing partnerships left and right every passing day. They recently announced Codius, a platform for developers to build smart contracts on the XRP ledger. If it was this simple and this was all there was to this investment, Ripple (XRP) could probably have been the second largest coin by now. If Ripple (XRP) is such a good company and it can get a chunk of the trillion dollars forex market, who would not want to invest in it? Let’s explore who wouldn’t. First of all, we need to separate Ripple from XRP, as the company finally has in the last few weeks. XRP now has a separate logo and Ripple (the company) wants the world to know that Ripple and XRP is not the same thing. So, why would Ripple want to separate itself from XRP? First of all, Ripple (the company) is currently under fire from the SEC that its token XRP is a security. In order to defend its position that XRP is not a security, Ripple (the company) has distanced itself from XRP to make a point that XRP will continue to exist even if Ripple (the company) exists or not. The company has further said that holding XRP does not give investors ownership of Ripple (the company). All of this sounds very good from a legal defense point of view, but where does it leave XRP investors? What is the actual purpose of XRP tokens? According to Ripple (the company) it is liquidity sourcing. Ripple provides liquidity solutions to financial institutions via its x Rapid service. Sounds good on paper but what about actual use cases? X Rapid’s largest user is Western Union whose CEO recently said in an interview that Ripple’s x Rapid service (the one that uses XRP) has not lowered Western Union’s costs or speed of transactions. In fact, it has made no difference. This is a bold announcement from a partner that Ripple was so proud to add to its list of ‘partners’. However, one thing investors need to understand is that most of these old financial giants love to associate themselves with anything that has cryptocurrency or blockchain in its name. That does not mean that any of those ‘partnerships’ have actual use cases. In markets like these an investment may seem lucrative from afar, but in order to make the best of it, proper due diligence and research should be done beforehand.