XRP Flips Solana, Topping $2 for First Time Since 2018 as Ethereum Price Hits 6-Month High

The price of XRP is currently sitting at $2.16 as of this writing, the highest price seen since January 2018 and the first time it's topped the $2.00 milestone in the same span. XRP is up 15% on the day, pushing its weekly gain to 54%. The asset has now quadrupled in price over the last 30 days, up 318% during that window.

At a current market cap of $134 billion, XRP has vaulted ahead of Solana to become the fourth-most valuable digital asset overall. Solana's market cap sits at about $112 billion, as of this writing.

As Decrypt covered yesterday and over the last few weeks, XRP is surging more than most major assets due in large part to optimism over its regulatory future. President-elect Donald Trump ran on a pro-crypto platform, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) head Gary Gensler has resigned effective January 20, 2025, when Trump will be sworn in.

The SEC has targeted Ripple Labs for alleged securities violations, leaving XRP—which was created by Ripple's founders and its used in its money-transfer services—with an uncertain future in the United States. However, the impending regime change has given investors confidence that XRP will face fewer challenges ahead, and could be adopted for spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other financial use cases.

XRP remains about 41% down from its all-time high price of $3.40 set back in January 2018, but again, it's closer than it has been in nearly seven years.

Of course, all leading cryptocurrencies have seen surging prices in recent weeks since Trump's election win, though Ethereum (ETH) had lagged behind Bitcoin and other coins in recent months.

But ETH may finally be catching up, as it hit a six-month high price of $3,741 on Sunday. Ethereum is up 11% on the week and 48% over the last 30 days, but is still about 24% off its all-time high mark of $4,878 from 2021.