XRP in 2025: The Best-Performing Altcoin?

Over the past year, most altcoins have been stuck or losing value compared to bitcoin, but one crypto has defied the trend. XRP. Unlike its peers, XRP has surged over 200% in the last 12 months, making it one of the best performing altcoins on the market. Now the question is, can it keep this momentum going? Are we looking at the early stages of a longer term breakout or or was it just a short lived pump? In this video we are taking a deep dive into what's really driving XRP's rally. We also explore whether it has what it takes to continue outperforming the rest of the market in the coming months. And just a quick reminder, this video is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. I'm Giovanni let's get into it First, a quick refresher on xrp. If you're already familiar with the basics, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. XRP is a cryptocurrency created by ripple Labs in 2012, designed specifically to make cross border payments faster, cheaper and more efficient. And the XRP Ledger, or xrpl, is the open source blockchain that powers the whole ecosystem. It was originally Created by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Brito and David Schwartz, all early pioneers in the crypto space. XRP's primary function is to serve as a bridge currency for cross border payments. For example, if a bank wants to send money from Japan to Mexico, it can convert Yen to xrp, send the XRP across the XRP ledger in seconds, and then convert it to pesos on the other end. Ripple's broader goal is to create an Internet of value, a world where money moves as free, freeliest data, seamlessly connecting financial institutions around the world. Now let's dive into the fundamentals of xrp. What sets it apart from other cryptocurrencies is its speed and cost. While Bitcoin transactions can take at least 10 minutes to settle, transactions on the XRP ledger settle in just three to five seconds. With fees amounting to only a fraction of a cent, the XRP ledger can process about 1,500 transactions per second, and that's significantly faster than Ethereum or Bitcoin, although still slower than Solana and other newer generation blockchains. But XRP isn't designed for fast paced meme coin trading. Its speed is sufficient for its core use cross border transactions among financial institutions. By the way guys, if you're enjoying the content so far, don't forget to smash the like button and subscribe to our channel XRP's high performance comes with tradeoffs, mainly criticism around centralization. While the XRP ledger's consensus protocol relies on over 200 validators, most participants rely on a smaller group of about 35 validators, known as the unique node list. Critics argue that this setup compromises decentralization and censorship resistance, core values of the cryptocurrency ethos. Supporters, however, disagree. They claim the UNL improves security and efficiency, helping to prevent bad actors from disrupting the network. It must be said that despite decentralization being a core principle of crypto, it's not the only ingredient for a successful cryptocurrency.

Maximum decentralization is actually counterproductive to product and creating things that are useful in crypto. What you want actually is to get to the point of sufficient decentralization while building an open platform that is highly performant. We think that the market is slowly coming around to that view.

But centralization aside, there is another issue. Competition. XRP was launched at a time when the crypto industry was just getting started. But since then stablecoins have taken the lead in cross border payments. And that makes sense. Why would someone use a volatile cryptocurrency like XRP for cross border transactions when they can use a stablecoin the value of which remains unchanged?

I see no evidence of meaningful cross border activity on Ripple XRP today. Stablecoins are the primary vehicle for cross border payments today in crypto, and Ripple doesn't even register.

This leads to a deeper issue, the disconnect between XRP the token and the XRP ledger. The thing is, financial institutions can use the XRP ledger for cross border payments with without using XRP as a bridge token. A bank, for instance, could transfer stablecoins on XRPL while only holding a minimal amount of XRP to meet reserve requirements and pay transaction fees. Also, XRPL validators do not have to stake XRP and do not earn XRP for processing transactions. In other words, XRP doesn't secure the network in the same way that ETH or BTC do for Ethereum or Bitcoin.

When you talk about proof of stake or proof of work, then you have some cost. You have to compensate the guys who are staking Ethereum, you have to compensate the mining process that is backing the Bitcoin network, and so on. But in the case of Ripple you have none of that. The fees that are required to be paid in XRP are extremely low.

This raises a fundamental question. What gives XRP its value? Right now it seems that most of XRP's price action is driven by speculation and its loyal community.

Despite the fact that the central organization is saying we want to be used for payments, that's not the reality today, and that's not what's driving the price today. The reality of XRP is that it is a retail trading vehicle. It is used by retail participants who believe the things they hear on TikTok to trade.

The XRP army is known for its strong presence on platforms like Twitter and Reddit. They are constantly advocating, defending and pushing for adoption, and they've helped keep XRP in the spotlight even when the fundamentals were underwhelming. By the way, I'm expecting them to be pretty active in the comments considering the critical nature of this video. Despite all the concerns mentioned above, XRP has been one of the best performing altcoins in the market and there are multiple reasons for that. One of the biggest issues surrounding XRP was the lawsuit filed by the sec back in 2020 against ripple accusing the company of selling unregistered securities. That case was recently dropped by the SEC under the crypto friendly Trump administration, lifting a major cloud over the future of Ripple and xrp. This development also sparked a renewed interest in the cryptocurrency as evidenced by a surge in searches on Google Trends. Ripple was also one of the largest crypto donors in the 2024 U.S. elections and has been actively growing its political influence in Washington, dc. Ripple's skillful lobbying seems to have paid off. Earlier this year, Trump even mentioned XRP as a potential component of a future US Crypto reserve. In addition, several ETF proposals related to XRP have been filed and appear to have a solid chance of being approved. This year, JP Morgan released a forecast suggesting that an XRP ETF would attract significant demand.

There are people who have trouble with the process flow of not being able to buy XRP in their brokerage account. They don't want to download an app, they don't know how to download Coinbase and go through the flows to get to xrp, and I think that having it in your brokerage account is much easier, so I think that that will open the door to more institutional capital.

Also, Ripple is taking advantage of the current political climate to roll out new products. For instance, it's building a DEFI ecosystem for institutions with a strong focus on tokenizing real world assets. This could help drive activity on the XRP ledger, which is still very small at the moment. For context, the DEFI ecosystem on XRPL holds about $80 million in total value locked compared to Ethereum's $50 billion. But Ripple made another major move in December last year when it launched its own stablecoin up RL USD. Despite the stiff competition in the stablecoin market, the market cap of RL USD has already more than doubled in the past month. And that is pretty bullish for xrp, since every transaction involving rlusd requires a fee to be paid in xrp, helping to increase demand for the token. Last but not least, Ripple recently acquired prime brokerage firm Hidden Road, which processes over $3 trillion in transactions annually. This is a major move, as a portion of these transactions will reportedly be settled using xrp. And now the big question what kind of price action can we expect for XRP in the coming months? As you might expect, much of it would depend on broader macroeconomic conditions, which, let's be honest, aren't looking too favorable for risk on assets at the moment. To get some insight, we reached out to crypto analyst Benjamin Cowan, who shared his thoughts on what might lie ahead for xrp.

So when you look at the XRP bitcoin valuation, essentially what it does is it'll occasionally spike, you know, to the 0.9 to 1 risk band, right? It just did it in November, December, and it it did it also in 2021 and in 2017 and 2018. In order to get any type of rally like that for XRP bitcoin, you would probably need to see the collective altcoin market come down to these lows over here. The reason we haven't really gotten that alt season is is because monetary policy never changed. Monetary policy never changed because the markets never gave the Fed a reason to pivot. The collective altcoin market needs to bleed against bitcoin a little while longer to really force, you know, force changes in monetary policy. The fact that it's recently had relative strength would suggest it might be more likely to have relative strength in the near future over altcoins that have just been bleeding.

So that's it for today, guys. What do you think of this analysis? Let us know in the comments on Also, if you enjoy the content, don't forget to like and subscribe. I'm Giovanni. See you soon. In the next video.