XRP (XRP) Makes a Comeback as 'Dino' Coins Capture Retail and Even Crypto Attention

The crypto market participants, who have been here through all the ups and downs, busy trying to get rid of bear market PTSD, getting chopped

Bitcoin might be hovering near $100,000 per coin, but altcoins are having a blast, especially those coins that were once widely popular in previous cycles but have since lost their significance to new projects.

One such old coin that is hogging all the limelight and liquidity from the market is XRP. The very same XRP that was once going to gain real-world adoption among banks and has been involved in a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now back on people's minds and portfolios.

XRP was originally developed in 2011, so it's one of the original coins that is still in existence today. At the time of the XRP Ledger's launch, the founders pre-mined 100 billion tokens, which is all the XRP in existence.

Out of these, 80 billion tokens were given to Ripple, a separate fintech entity that builds global payment systems to fund the project's future development, operations, expansion, and adoption. The rest of the 20 billion XRP tokens were divided among the founders. So, whenever Ripple and its founders sell coins from their stash, new coins enter the market. As of writing, there are just over 57 billion XRP coins in circulation, according to CoinGecko.

When it comes to price, XRP is currently trading at $2.65, up a whopping 430% since November 5, when the entire crypto market started its bullish mania driven by Republican President-elect Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

For some, this insane jump may seem out of the ordinary, but not only are such moves normal in crypto but XRP, in particular, is known for sudden price bursts.

For instance, during the 2017 bull market, XRP started the year around $0.0065, and it was still trading at this level in mid-March when, in less than a month, its price had over a 10x surge in its value, and then in May, it further went up, above $0.46. In the same year, the price was trading around $0.2 when the price started pumping ten days into that month. This face-melting rally had XRP price hitting an all-time high (ATH) of $3.40 on January 7, 2018, representing an increase of more than 520x in its value in just over a year.

While XRP price rallied strongly in the 2021 bull market, the performance wasn't anywhere near the 2017 cycle. The last bull cycle saw XRP price only pulling a 10x, as it went from $0.2 at the beginning of that year to almost $2 in April 2021.

So, XRP hasn't hit a new peak in almost seven years. But the market hopes are high this time around as the crypto asset shows renewed signs of life.

XRP was actually doing mostly nothing while the broad crypto market rallied this past two years, but it finally changed with the US election win.

Suddenly, the market was bid aggressively on XRP. In less than a month, XRP's price surpassed the 2021 high, hitting $2.9 on December 3. As of writing, XRP/USD has been trading at $2.64 while managing $42.5 billion in 24-hour volume, which is 4th largest after Tether, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.

With these latest gains, the $149 billion market cap XRP has overtaken Solana (SOL) and Tether (USDT) to become the 3rd largest cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, its price is now only 22.7% away from its ATH.

Interestingly, XRP is far closer to its peak than ETH, which is 23.7% away from its 2021 high of $4,880, and Dogecoin, which is 42.6% off of the $0.731 peak. So, what's behind XRP's strong price performance?

‘Dino' Coins Capturing Retail & Even Crypto Attention

The crypto market participants, who have been here through all the ups and downs, busy trying to get rid of bear market PTSD, getting chopped, chasing airdrops, and accumulating newer coins for a new bull market, the mainstream retail investors completely bypassed those and either went into different new coins like the CHILLGUY or chose the old route.

XRP is one of those coins that investors heavily bid among old coins. These so-called ‘dino' coins are cryptocurrencies that once had exciting use cases and all the popularity but have since lost ground to other new projects.

Besides XRP, the old coins that pumped significantly involve Litecoin (LTC), Tron (TRX), Cardano (ADA), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Hedera (