XRP (XRP 1.36%), the native token of the XRP Ledger, hit a multi-year high of $3.65 last July. That marked a 12-bagger gain from its lowest price of about $0.30 in 2023.
That rally was mainly driven by the conclusion of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple, whose founders created XRP. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleged that Ripple sold its own XRP tokens as unlicensed securities.
That pressure caused Ripple to lose several of its top customers and the top crypto exchanges to delist XRP. But last year, that lawsuit ended with a lighter-than-expected fine for Ripple and a ruling that XRP wasn't an unlicensed security when sold to retail investors.
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After those clouds cleared, the top crypto exchanges relisted XRP, while the SEC approved its first spot-price exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Ripple's application for a bank charter. Those catalysts drove XRP's price higher, but it still declined more than 30% over the past 12 months as investors focused on its longer-term challenges.
XRP is primarily used as a bridge currency for fiat transactions on Ripple's blockchain-based payment platform, but Ripple launched its own stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD 0.01%), in 2024. Ripple USD could eventually cannibalize XRP as a bridge currency, since it's inherently more stable and remains pegged to the U.S. dollar. So instead of wondering if XRP will ever recover, investors should simply buy a cryptocurrency with a wider moat: Ether (ETH 1.46%), the native token of the Ethereum blockchain.
CRYPTO: XRP
Key Data Points
Why does Ether have a wider moat?
Ethereum supports smart contracts, which are used to develop decentralized apps and other crypto assets. It served 31,869 active developers in late 2025, making it the world's largest blockchain-based developer platform by a wide margin.
As a proof-of-stake (PoS) token, Ether can't be mined -- but it can be staked (locked up) on the blockchain to earn interest-like rewards. By comparison, the XRP Ledger doesn't natively support smart contracts or staking, which limits its appeal among developers and investors.
CRYPTO: ETH
Key Data Points
Ethereum faces competition from faster Layer 1 PoS blockchains like Solana (SOL 4.17%). Still, it's keeping up with Layer 2 "rollups," which bundle together multiple transactions and process them off-chain at comparable speeds. Over the next few years, the Ethereum Foundation plans to improve scalability, reduce network congestion and gas fees, and boost overall efficiency through three major upgrades: The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.
Those upgrades will likely draw even more developers to Ethereum's blockchain and make Ether more valuable as the default cryptocurrency for that expanding ecosystem. That's why I firmly believe Ether, which has already rallied nearly 50% over the past 12 months, is still a better investment than XRP. Ether's spot price ETFs, which were initially approved in 2024, also make the token just as accessible to retail investors as XRP and Bitcoin.
