Ripple - or XRP - prices surged in 2021, but went down significantly as 2022 progressed. As of July 15, 2025, one XRP token was worth 2.95 U.S. dollars. Ethereum's price, for example, kept on reaching new all-time highs, a feat not performed by XRP. Indeed, XRP's more price spikes followed relatively late - only occurring in early 2021, against late 2020 for most other cryptos - after the US SEC filed a legal complaint against Ripple in November 2020. This legal action caused the XRP price to plummet from around 0.70 U.S. dollars to 0.20 U.S. dollars.Ripple versus XRP: two become oneTechnically speaking, Ripple is not a cryptocurrency. Renamed from a protocol called OpenCoin in 2013, Ripple facilitates open-source payments. XRP, on the other hand, is the cryptocurrency that runs on this network. In that sense, Ripple and XRP have a similar symbiosis to each other like the Ethereum network and its cryptocurrency Ether. Unlike Ethereum - whose price changes are connected to the world of Decentralized Finance or DeFI - Ripple/XRP mostly looks at developments on cross-border payments for companies. In 2020, companies worldwide began to favor fintech solutions for future B2B solutions and, in a way, Ripple is an extension of that.What affects the price of Ripple?Ripple is mostly active in Southeast Asia - a region with a splintered payment landscape and that heavily investigates its own types of state-issued cryptocurrency to make cross-border payments a lot easier. Price spikes tend to follow after news on this topic in this specific region. In 2019, for example, the XRP price grew after Japan and South Korea began testing to reduce time and costs for transferring international funds between the two countries. In March 2021, Ripple announced that it had agreed to acquire 40 percent of Malaysian cross-border payments firm Tranglo to meet growing demand in Southeast Asia.

The market cap of Ripple, or XRP, grew substantially in November 2024, after the results of the United States elections. At the beginning of 2024, the cryptocurrency had a market capitalization of around ** billion U.S. dollars. One year later, this had changed to *** billion U.S. dollars. The company Ripple faced charges in 2020 from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which led to a *** million U.S. dollar fine in August 2024 as the company was sentenced for violating investor-protection laws. The SEC appealed this decision, deeming the sentence too low. The results of the U.S. elections in November 2024, however, and the announced changes to the leadership of the SEC, made crypto investors believe that the case against Ripple Labs might be dropped in January 2025.

The price of the cryptocurrency based on the famous internet meme broke its price decline in early November 2022 - as people started buying the coin after FTX's collapse. This rally only lasted for a few days, however, as a Dogecoin was worth roughly 0.2 U.S. dollars on July 15, 2025. This is a different development than in 2021 - when the crypto became very popular in a short amount of time. Between January 28 and January 29, 2021, Dogecoin's value grew by around 216 percent to 0.023535 U.S. dollars after comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The digital coin quickly grew to become the most talked-about cryptocurrency available: not necessarily for its price - the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and several other virtual currencies were much higher than that of DOGE - but for its growth.

After several fluctuations in earlier years, the price of Tether or USDT since 2020 achieved the stability against the U.S. dollar that it was designed to reach. In 2021, Tether ranks as one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world and is regarded as the most well-known "stablecoin", or cryptocurrency that is connected to the price development of another, real-world asset. As Tether's USDT code suggest, the token is, in this case, connected to the U.S. dollar. This effectively means that a single Tether will nearly always be worth one single U.S. dollar. This relative stability, unlike the price development of, say, Ripple (XRP), is what defines a stablecoin and is especially important for decentralized lending and borrowing. This particular segment made up roughly half of the overall value locked in Decentralized Finance or DeFi.

Bitcoin ranked as one of the most expensive cryptocurrencies existing by April 2024 - although values changed noticeably. Bitcoin had the most expensive cryptocurrency for a while, but Ethereum was significantly cheaper, with a price that was roughly 30 times less than that of the most well-known digital currency. However, Bitcoin is in a unique position. Ethereum is one of several cryptocurrencies, for instance, that come from blockchains that focus on making financial applications possible. Bitcoin, or a digital equivalent of gold When one categorizes the different types of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin stands out as it is one of the few that are essentially meant to store digital value. Some describe Bitcoin as a digital version of gold, purely designed to hold or possibly purchasing power over time. It has no other applications built around it, and is considered too slow to perform financial transactions. Stablecoins, the less volatile cryptocurrency Many coins in this ranking stand out as their price seemingly has not changed as much as others. This is because these are stablecoins - cryptocurrencies pegged to the price development of an external asset. This group of digital assets comprise an increasing share within the overall crypto market. Some see these coins as the future of retail payments, whereas others view these coins as a "safe" addition to their crypto investments.