While XRP is trading about 63 percent below its peak in early 2018, analysts are examining its performance gap with Bitcoin and Ethereum through the lenses of supply, demand, and Ripple’s strategy.
The XRP price of about $1.33 used in CoinDesk’s analysis remains well below its $3.55 peak in January 2018. Investors who bought at that level and held on are still at a loss, although XRP briefly surpassed its old record in July 2025, reaching $3.66.
In the same comparison, Bitcoin is 314 percent above its December 2017 peak. The gains are listed as 322 percent for Dogecoin, about 2,800 percent for BNB, 66 percent for Ethereum, and 38 percent for Zcash. Tron, meanwhile, remains about 4 percent below its previous cycle peak. These figures compare prices with the peaks of the 2017–2018 cycle; they do not represent daily returns.
How is the increase in XRP supply affecting its price?
Nansen senior research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard notes that the amount of XRP in circulation has grown from 38.7 billion to 63.1 billion since 2017. Supply growth of about 63 percent means the same total market capitalization is divided among more tokens.
Tesseract Group marketing director Oliver Carding also says price and total market capitalization should be considered separately. If supply had increased by 63 percent while market capitalization remained unchanged, the price per token would be about 39 percent lower. This calculation illustrates the effect of supply growth on price; it is not presented as an explanation for the entire performance gap.
Fund demand and Ripple’s priorities
XRP ETFs traded in the United States have attracted about $1.8 billion in net investor inflows in roughly a year since launching. Bitcoin funds, by contrast, can attract more than $1 billion in inflows on their own on some days. Wincent executive Paul Howard says interest in XRP funds has lagged behind that in Bitcoin and Ethereum funds.
According to Howard, Ripple’s focus on cross-border payments, RLUSD, and trade finance products has also put XRP in a different position. While decentralized finance and other new investment themes have drawn interest to assets such as Ethereum, Solana, and HYPE, Ripple has focused on payment infrastructure.
The lawsuit is over, but the performance gap remains
The lawsuit the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed against Ripple in 2020 created prolonged regulatory uncertainty. In 2023, a court treated XRP sales on public exchanges differently from institutional sales; Ripple was fined $125 million in 2024. The lawsuit ended when both parties withdrew their appeals in August 2025.
Carding emphasizes that this uncertainty played a role in XRP’s failure to reach its previous peak in 2021, but says the period after the lawsuit should also be considered separately. In his comparison, since the appeals were withdrawn, XRP has fallen about 59 percent, Bitcoin 32 percent, and Ethereum 44 percent.
The indicators Carding is tracking going forward are XRP’s performance against Bitcoin, the net amount of tokens released to the market after excluding tokens relocked in Ripple’s escrow accounts, and changes in assets held by funds. If new supply entering the market slows while XRP remains weak against Bitcoin, he says, that could point to a shortfall on the demand side.
Not investment advice.