Even after today’s 4% retracement off October’s near-record highs for crypto prices, most major assets have rallied year-to-date. Bitcoin has added 66% to its market capitalization while smaller assets like Dogecoin and BNB have nearly doubled. In fact, every top 10 crypto asset has posted positive or neutral performance in 2024 except one: XRP.
With total crypto market capitalization $680 billion higher than January 1, holders of XRP are disappointed, to say the least. Even troubled stablecoins like tether — with its 19 run-ins with the US government, including a Manhattan US Attorney investigation this month — have performed better than the Ripple-promoted coin.
The pain is even more acute after Ripple partially prevailed in the highest-profile lawsuit in crypto history and earned a ruling from Judge Analisa Torres that many secondary transactions of XRP purchases by retail investors were not securities transactions.
Year-to-date, XRP is down 17% and has shed $5 billion in market capitalization.
Read more: How New York judge Analisa Torres changed Gary Gensler’s career
Of course, the world’s most powerful and well-staffed securities regulator is asking the prestigious 2nd Circuit to overrule that determination. For a while, though, it seemed like XRP had cleared a major legal hurdle.
The XRP community also celebrated major scalability upgrades to the XRP Ledger and the launch of its new stablecoin, RLUSD. Prominent banks announced intentions to explore XRPL for cross-border payments. Ripple started tokenizing real-world assets via a partnership with the first Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-regulated digital asset exchange.
None of it earned XRP more of a bid over its competitors among the top 10. Year-to-date, XRP is down 17% and has shed $5 billion in market capitalization.
