Holding is widely touted as a great way to build wealth in the crypto market, but it hasn't worked for every coin.
Take XRP (XRP), the payments-focused cryptocurrency native to the XRP Ledger and the world’s fifth-largest digital asset by market value.
The token is still trading well below its 2017 cycle high, while most other major cryptocurrencies have climbed far above theirs. In 2017, crypto broke into the mainstream, pulling in new users and investors during the frenzied run that carried into the first week or two of 2018.
XRP currently trades around $1.33, down 62.5% from its early January 2018 peak of $3.55. In other words, an XRP buyer from that peak is still underwater nearly nine years later. (XRP did briefly top its old high, reaching $3.66 in July 2025 before crashing.)
Bitcoin BTC$80,955.28 is up 314% from its December 2017 peak of $19,804. Dogecoin DOGE$0.08239 is up 322% from its January 2018 high, and BNB BNB$730.18 is up about 2,800%. Ether ETH$2,446.08 is up 66% and zcash (ZEC) is up 38%. Tron is also slightly below its peak, down about 4%. Solana launched in 2020.
Bitcoin, ether and many other tokens have pulled back sharply from their 2025 peaks, yet remain far above their 2017 highs.
"Circulating supply grew 63%, from 38.7B in 2017 to 63.1B, while XRP's total market value fell only about 3%," Nicolai Sondergaard, senior research analyst at analytics firm Nansen, told CoinDesk. "More XRP in circulation means each token represents a smaller share of roughly the same total value."
Circulating supply is the number of coins on the market, and as it grows, each coin represents a smaller share of the total.
Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, says XRP looks better when measured by total value instead of price.
"On value, XRP recovered," he said. "About 63% more XRP is in circulation than at that peak, so the same circulating market capitalization would mean a price roughly 39% lower."
Tesseract is an institutional digital asset management firm that manages over $500 million in assets under management.
U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, have opened the door for institutional investors to take exposure to digital assets. While bitcoin and ether funds have pulled in billions, XRP funds have lagged big time.
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