‘XRP Price is Being Suppressed,’ Researcher Says

$XRP has spent years frustrating its most devoted supporters. The token that once surged to $3.84 during the 2018 bull run and briefly touched $3.60 again earlier this cycle has spent the better part of a decade trading sideways while Bitcoin climbed from thousands to hundreds of thousands.

For Jesse from Apex Crypto Insights, a researcher who has spent years studying the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain infrastructure, that price behaviour is not an accident.

“I do think the price of $XRP is possibly being suppressed,” Jesse said in a recent interview. “That is my opinion because it does not make sense that the price would have stayed the same for years.”

The Internet of Value

Jesse’s framework goes well beyond the typical payments narrative. History has produced only one true internet, the internet of information. What is being built now, he argues, is a second layer alongside it. “$XRP is the internet of value,” he said, pointing to Ripple’s Interledger Protocol as the infrastructure through which value moves the way information moves today.

Following the Documents

The most striking part of Jesse’s research is not the theory but the paper trail. In 2021, a Citibank document referred to a concept called the Regulated Internet of Value. The name was subsequently changed to the Regulated Liability Network, and Jesse argues that shift happened precisely because the connection to Ripple was too obvious. He points to Citibank’s Tony McLaughlin confirming that the Regulated Liability Network and the concept of a shared ledger are the same thing, then traces the thread to the Bank for International Settlements, which has described a unified ledger that would replace correspondent banking and potentially replace Swift entirely.

“I proved from their own documents, from their own mouths, that the regulated network, the unified ledger, the shared ledger concept, it is all the same thing,” he said.

Why the Price Has Not Moved

If $XRP is quietly being positioned as the settlement layer for a redesigned global financial system, why has the price stayed flat? Jesse is careful to frame his suppression theory as opinion rather than proven fact. But the logic is straightforward: an asset that major financial institutions plan to use as a neutral settlement layer may be subject to price management in ways ordinary crypto assets are not. Volatility in a reserve settlement asset is a feature nobody wants.

Whether that theory is correct will be answered by the market. But the institutional breadcrumbs Jesse has spent years following suggest the question deserves more serious attention than it typically receives.