XRP coin below Bitcoin and Ether on three uphill lanes

Why XRP Is Still Below Its 2018 High While Bitcoin and Ether Moved Far Beyond Theirs

By Isaac • October 16, 2026 11:17 am • Comments

XRP has spent years at the center of some of crypto’s biggest legal, payments and institutional-adoption stories. Its price record tells a much less dramatic story.

The fifth-largest cryptocurrency was trading near $1.33 on Thursday, still roughly 62.5% below its January 2018 peak of $3.55. Bitcoin and Ether, by contrast, have both moved well beyond their comparable early-2018 highs.

XRP briefly broke above its old record in July 2025, but the move did not hold.

Trending: XRP Exchange Wallets Add 84 Million Tokens, but the Data Does Not Prove a Sell-Off

One bad week or one lawsuit cannot explain that gap. It reflects a larger mix of supply growth, weaker demand and a market that has found newer places to put its money.

CoinDesk reports that XRP’s circulating supply rose from 38.7 billion tokens in 2017 to 63.1 billion today, an increase of about 63%. Over the same span, the token’s total circulating market value changed far less than the supply.

A token’s price is only one slice of the picture. When many more tokens are circulating, each one represents a smaller portion of the network’s total market value.

XRP can therefore recover much of its old market capitalization without returning to the same per-token price. CoinDesk also found that spot volume fell 53.5%, perpetual-futures volume fell 44%, and active addresses fell 10.7%.

The report says U.S. XRP funds have collected about $1.80 billion since launching nearly a year ago. That is serious money, yet Bitcoin funds can attract more than $1 billion in a single day.

CoinGecko currently lists about 63.13 billion XRP in circulation against a maximum supply of 100 billion. It also places XRP fifth among cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

XRP is a large, actively traded asset. Its expanded supply makes the old per-token record a tougher hurdle.

The market tracker also shows an all-time high of $3.65 and a price roughly 64% below that mark at the time of review. Its supply data puts the fully diluted value well above the circulating market capitalization, another reminder that future token availability matters when investors compare today’s price with an old peak.

Fresh exchange data also shows why traders are watching the balance closely. CryptoQuant said XRP whale inflows to Binance reached a seven-month high, warning that more tokens arriving at centralized exchanges can increase available supply and potential selling pressure.

That does not prove whales are selling. It does show that XRP needs enough new buying to absorb a larger liquid supply.

Without that demand, even good news can struggle to produce a durable repricing.

Ripple has continued to build payment, custody, tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure. The company announced this week that Meritz Securities will use Ripple technology for institutional custody and tokenization in South Korea.

Those deals strengthen Ripple’s business. They do not necessarily create the same direct demand for XRP that a token-focused application would.

Crypto investors now have more competing narratives as well, including staking, decentralized finance, prediction markets and high-throughput trading networks.

XRP also lost years to regulatory uncertainty. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020.

A judge later ruled that exchange sales were not securities offerings while institutional sales were, and Ripple was ordered to pay a $125 million penalty. Both sides dropped their appeals in August 2025, but the case had already limited access and momentum through a major crypto cycle.

The old high is not a magical ceiling. XRP traded above it briefly in 2025, proving that the market can cross it.

The harder question is whether demand can stay strong enough to hold those gains while supply continues to expand.

The cleanest test is relative performance. If XRP begins outperforming Bitcoin while escrow releases slow and network activity improves, the market would be signaling stronger token demand.

If it keeps lagging even as supply growth moderates, the number of coins is only part of the problem.

XRP remains one of crypto’s largest and most recognizable assets. But size, partnerships and a famous brand do not guarantee that a token will repeat the wealth creation of Bitcoin or Ether.

For XRP, the next sustained move will have to be earned by demand rather than headlines.

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