A Ten Year Review of XRP Price Trends
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Ryan Fugger founded RipplePay in 2004 with the core idea of establishing a peer-to-peer payment network that could potentially replace traditional banking systems. In 2012, Ryan Fugger handed over RipplePay to early Bitcoin pioneer Jed McCaleb, who then invited Chris Larsen to serve as the Executive Chairman, and together, they created the OpenCoin project.
In January 2013, the company launched the cryptocurrency XRP (Ripple), with a total supply limited to 100 billion XRP. The initial private sale price of XRP was $0.0000001. Venture capital firms such as Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund participated in the private fundraising. Later that year, XRP entered the market at a price of $0.0058. At the end of 2013, OpenCoin rebranded as Ripple Labs. In 2015, Ripple Labs changed its name to Ripple. In 2018, XRP reached its all-time high price of $3.84, marking an increase of nearly 40 million times from the private sale price and 660 times from its initial market price. As a result, XRP is also known as "the demon coin."
From its private sale price to its peak, XRP went through several significant upward trends:
Source: CoinMarketCap
① First Price Surge
In 2013, the initial price of XRP tokens when they entered the market was around $0.0058. For the next few years, the token's price remained relatively stable, fluctuating around its initial market price. It wasn't until March to May 2017 that the token's price skyrocketed from $0.006 to a peak of $0.37, marking a remarkable 60-fold increase. Afterward, the price slowly declined, reaching $0.23 in December 2017.
② Second Price Surge
Toward the end of 2017, Bitcoin and the blockchain industry started gaining mainstream attention. In this context, XRP once again began to surge. In December 2017, XRP initiated its rally from around $0.23, reaching its all-time high of $3.84 in January 2018, marking a 16-fold increase. Over the next few months, as the market cooled down and funds were withdrawn, XRP plummeted to around $0.5 (data from April 2018), losing nearly 90% of its peak value. While XRP experienced a brief rebound in May 2018, the price continued to decline. From the second half of 2018 until March 2021, XRP's price fluctuated around $0.20 to $0.60.
③ Third Price Surge
In 2021, the fundamentals of the blockchain industry started to improve, with innovative applications like NFTs gaining popularity. These fundamental improvement to blockchain technology was reflected in the prices of cryptocurrencies. By the end of March 2021, XRP's price was still around $0.50, but in April, it had surged to around $1.80, finally leveling off at around $1.50 in May. Afterward, the price began a slow decline until July 2021, when it dropped to a low of $0.60.
④ Fourth Price Surge
Starting from late July 2021, XRP experienced another rebound. In early September 2021, XRP reached the highest point of this rally, around $1.35. The price remained near $1 until November 2021. Afterward, XRP started declining, with some brief rebounds, but the downtrend persisted. In May 2022, XRP finally hit a low of around $0.40.
⑤ Fifth Price Surge on the Horizon?
From May 2022 to early July 2023, XRP has been consolidating around $0.40 to $0.50. In mid-July, a U.S. judge ruled that the XRP token "is not necessarily a security on its face" and that their sale did not violate federal securities laws. This positive news had an impact, and on July 13, 2023, XRP began another surge, rising from around $0.45 to nearly $0.8, with a single-day increase of over 70%. Does this explosive price surge signal the start of a new upward trend for XRP? Only time will tell.