Crypto Researcher Says Franklin Templeton Paper Supports Incomprehensibly High XRP Prices

An anonymous crypto researcher has cited a Franklin Templeton paper to argue that the value of XRP could reach “Incomprehensibly high” levels.

During an interview on the AllInCrypto podcast, self-acclaimed researcher SMQKE referred to a July 2025 Franklin Templeton publication to explain why he believes the price of XRP could eventually reach such unimaginable heights.

Notably, the paper, titled Revolution, Not Evolution: The Crypto Dilemma, came from Sandy Kaul, Head of Innovation at Franklin Templeton. Kaul wrote the piece to challenge traditional views of crypto and explain why digital assets deserve recognition as a different and investible asset class rather than being treated as speculative technology.

Why Crypto Compares to Core Internet Tech

In the paper, Kaul spotlighted why many institutional investors continue to reject crypto. She explained that some still associate digital assets with early anti-establishment culture, including cypherpunk ideology and dark-web marketplaces. 

She also noted that others fail to understand how decentralized networks function as businesses and how their tokens create economic incentives. Kaul argued that this skepticism remains widespread despite stablecoins gaining regulatory clarity and crypto networks generating trillions of dollars in transaction volume.

Interestingly, Kaul called crypto protocols open-source systems rather than traditional companies, noting that they lack executives, balance sheets, and equity ownership. She compared blockchain protocols to internet technologies such as TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and SNTP, which made the modern internet possible.

Notably, these earlier protocols transformed global commerce and communication, yet their creators could not directly capture the value they generated. According to the paper, if they had a way to do this, their values would have been “incomprehensibly high.”

Kaul explained that crypto changes this model by allowing protocols to attach value to native tokens, enabling them to benefit from decentralized network growth in a way similar to how stocks reflect company performance.

XRP Could Attain “Incomprehensibly High” Prices

Speaking on this during the AllInCrypto podcast, SMQKE explained that the Franklin Templeton paper highlights a major historical limitation of the internet, whose values would have been incredibly high if the progenitors had found a way to monetize them.

He then applied this to modern blockchain networks. SMQKE called attention to projects such as Ripple, Stellar, and Hedera, which operate on protocols that include native assets like XRP, XLM, and HBAR. 

Unlike older internet infrastructure, these networks can directly monetize the services they provide. He argued that this represents the first time in internet history that the core value-transfer layer can carry an embedded financial asset.

Focusing on XRP, SMQKE explained that the asset serves as the native currency of the Ripple protocol and supports a global system designed to move value efficiently across borders. 

According to him, because XRP enables this value-transfer function, assigning it a meaningful price leads to conclusions that challenge low values like $2. From his perspective, discussions centered on modest price levels do not show the scale of the underlying system. However, it is important to note that SMQKE chose not to project any price targets for XRP.