Bitcoin may be leading the charge across the crypto industry since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election this month, but XRP—the Ripple-linked asset—is seeing much larger gains of late. And on Saturday, it reached a price not seen in nearly seven years.
XRP jumped to a recent high of $1.93 on Saturday, topping the 2021 peak of $1.92. The last time that XRP was worth $1.93 was back in January 2018, according to data from CoinGecko, just after setting its all-time high mark of $3.40. That was almost seven years ago.
Now trading for $1.89, XRP has surged by nearly 30% over the last week, pushing its 30-day gain to 274%.
What's driving renewed interest in XRP? It's undoubtedly the prospect of a crypto-friendly Trump administration, which has benefited crypto broadly in recent weeks—and particularly, the prospect of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler being out of a job come January.
Under Gensler, the SEC has aggressively targeted crypto firms in the United States, particularly Ripple Labs, whose founders created XRP and use the digital asset for money-transmitting services. The two sides have traded blows for years, with both claiming victories along the way.
But with Gensler announcing his resignation effective January 20, 2025—the date that Trump will be sworn into office—Ripple Labs may find an easier path to a resolution in the near future. And with that, XRP's regulatory uncertainty may also be clarified. That's why companies like WisdomTree and Bitwise are making ETF plans in recent days.
XRP fell sharply in the years since hitting its all-time mark, dropping to a low of $0.127 in March 2020. Someone who invested in XRP at that price would have seen a 1,420% gain at its recent high earlier Saturday.