Just came across something interesting about XRP that caught my attention. There's this former Ripple executive, Robert Mitchnick, who now heads BlackRock's digital assets division, and apparently he published some research back in 2018 that included pretty bold price targets for XRP.

What's notable here is that AllInCrypto recently dug up this old research and highlighted it on X. Mitchnick co-authored a report when he joined BlackRock in February 2018 that analyzed digital assets and their potential valuations. The guy literally modeled different scenarios for XRP's future price, including what he called a double-digit target for the asset.

Looking at the specifics, the report set a low estimate of $6.37 for XRP, which was already above where it was trading at the time. They also calculated what they termed a fundamental value range between $1.59 to $8.23 by assigning a 25% probability to the success case. For context, XRP was trading between $0.49 and $3.72 back then. Compare that to today's price around $1.46, and you can see where this gets interesting.

What makes this worth paying attention to is Mitchnick's current position. The same person who contributed to that analysis now oversees BlackRock's entire digital asset strategy. That's not a small role. While BlackRock hasn't filed for an XRP ETF specifically, their growing presence in crypto and having a former Ripple executive leading that charge has naturally sparked interest among investors.

The analyst also connected Mitchnick's XRP estimates to his earlier Bitcoin assessments from the same report, suggesting those high-end valuations deserve serious consideration. It's one of those moments where you realize how the people moving between major institutions can shape market narratives and investor perception around specific assets.