Why XRP still trades below its 2018 peak, explained

Long-term holding has worked well for bitcoin and ether, but not for XRP: the token trades around $1.33, about 62.5% below its early-January 2018 peak of $3.55, CoinDesk notes in an analysis published Friday. Someone who bought at that top is still underwater almost nine years later, even though XRP briefly set a new high of $3.66 in July 2025 before falling back.

How the other majors compare

Measured against their 2017–18 cycle highs, according to CoinDesk's figures:

• Bitcoin: up about 314% from its December 2017 peak of $19,804.
• Dogecoin: up about 322%; BNB: up roughly 2,800%.
• Ether: up about 66%; Zcash: up about 38%.
• Tron: about 4% below its old high, close to XRP's camp.

Reason 1: many more tokens

Nansen senior research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard told CoinDesk that XRP's circulating supply grew 63%, from 38.7 billion in 2017 to 63.1 billion, while the asset's total market value fell only about 3%. In other words, the network is worth roughly the same, but the value is spread across far more coins. Tesseract's Oliver Carding made the same point: with about 63% more XRP in circulation, an unchanged market cap implies a price roughly 39% lower.

Reason 2: the SEC years

The SEC sued Ripple and two executives in December 2020, alleging about $1.3 billion in unregistered XRP sales. A 2023 ruling found exchange sales were not securities offerings but institutional sales were; Ripple was ordered to pay a $125 million penalty in 2024, and both sides dropped appeals in August 2025. Carding says the case explains why XRP missed the 2021 bull run, when Coinbase had suspended trading. Since August 2025, though, XRP has fallen about 59%, versus 32% for bitcoin and 44% for ether.

Reason 3: weaker demand signals

US XRP funds have gathered about $1.8 billion since launching nearly a year ago, per SoSoValue — less than bitcoin ETFs sometimes take in on a single day (compare our ETF flow report from Oct. 14). Nansen data also shows spot volume down 53.5%, perpetual futures volume down 44% and active addresses down 10.7%. Wincent's Paul Howard adds that Ripple has focused on payments, the RLUSD stablecoin and trade finance rather than DeFi, AI or memecoins, where capital has flowed — see Ripple's recent push with Privy wallets on the XRP Ledger.

What analysts are watching

Carding is tracking XRP's price against bitcoin together with net monthly supply released from Ripple's escrow and changes in fund holdings. If XRP keeps lagging BTC even as new supply slows, that would point to weaker underlying demand. This is analysis of past performance, not a prediction.