[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee presented the possibility of further exponential growth in the cryptocurrency market, and forecast that XRP could benefit from the trend.

On Feb. 17 local time, blockchain media outlet The Crypto Basic reported that Lee voiced an optimistic view of the cryptocurrency market at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai. He pushed back against claims that crypto has already peaked, and stressed it is premature to judge the industry's potential based only on the past decade's performance. He said a large gap still exists between current market participation and potential global demand.

Lee said there are only about 4.4 million bitcoin wallets holding at least $10,000. By contrast, about 900 million people globally have more than $10,000 in retirement savings. He said if bitcoin eventually achieves a penetration rate comparable to that global savings market, adoption could expand by as much as 200 times. He described that as an ultra-fast, exponential growth phase rather than simple linear growth.

Lee also cited a recent Bank of America survey and said participation by institutional money remains limited. In that survey, 67 percent of professional fund managers said they did not allocate any assets to bitcoin. He interpreted this as a clear disconnect between potential demand and actual market exposure.

Lee also pointed to tokenisation efforts in traditional finance. Major Wall Street institutions are trying to shift nearly all financial products such as stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate to blockchain-based formats, he said, and argued that including global real estate, the pool of tokenisable assets could reach about $10 quadrillion. He said moving those assets onto blockchain rails could bring large-scale liquidity into the broader crypto ecosystem.

Some observers say such an environment could also support XRP. XRP currently accounts for about 4 percent of market share among major cryptocurrencies. If tokenisation accelerates and financial activity broadly shifts to blockchain payments, XRP could gain price momentum if it maintains a certain level of liquidity role within that ecosystem, the scenario says.

In connection with this, Google's artificial intelligence model Google Gemini analysed Lee's $10 quadrillion figure as referring not to crypto's market capitalisation but to the total addressable market of overall financial assets that could move on-chain over the long term. Gemini calculated that if the tokenised ecosystem grows to $10 quadrillion and XRP maintains a 4 percent share within it, a theoretical value of $40 trillion could be formed.

Dividing that by XRP's estimated circulating supply of 60.2 billion tokens yields a simple calculation in which XRP could reach about $664 per token. Gemini described this as an optimistic scenario that requires strong assumptions. It said the forecast would be possible only if broad tokenisation of global assets, mainstream adoption of blockchain payments and XRP's position as a key liquidity asset are all met.

Ultimately, Lee's remarks are interpreted as emphasising that the cryptocurrency market is still at an early stage and that a market on a completely different scale could form if on-chain shifts of institutional capital and global assets accelerate in earnest. The assessment adds that whether such a scenario becomes reality depends on the future regulatory environment, the pace of institutional adoption and the level of technological development.