XRP tops dogecoin all-time returns after its second-biggest pump ever

XRP lit up after a US district court threw Ripple Labs a bone by ruling sales of the token on crypto exchanges were not securities.

Markets pumped XRP up to 96% on the news, jumping from $0.47387 to $0.927 in under three hours. It has since retraced around 25% from local highs.

Still, Thursday’s pump was XRP’s second-biggest intraday rally in its 10-year history. It clocked in second only to a 216% surge in April 2017 and ahead of a 92% jump in December of that year at the height of that bull market. 

XRP’s all-time rally record coincided with word spreading that Japan’s largest bank, MUFG, had joined an interbank working group meant to propel adoption of Ripple payment rails.

• XRP was worth a cumulative $500 million then (bitcoin was $16.6 billion).
• Crypto’s overall capitalization sat below $30 billion. 
• Total market is now $1.25 trillion, after more than 4,000% growth in six years.

XRP is still down 75% since its all-time high. But markets are far larger with deeper liquidity today than they were back in 2017, which makes significant one-day rallies much more elusive.

Exactly how special was the XRP pump?

Blockworks analyzed daily data for XRP, bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), binance coin (BNB) and dogecoin (DOGE) to see how Ripple’s recent pump really stacked up.

Turns out, yesterday’s XRP pump came in the 15th spot. Dogecoin holds the top two spots: a 358% surge in December 2013 and a 344% showing in January 2021, when billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Cuban regularly tweeted about DOGE.

Dogecoin represents almost half of the top 20 intraday pumps to bitcoin’s seven. BTC exploded 241% in July 2010 — slightly ahead of XRP’s number-one rally. BNB only features once.

That’s still more than ether. ETH’s biggest intraday pump on record was only 49%, in August 2015, when it swam from $1.26 to $1.88. 

Ether’s all-time rally finds itself in 39th place overall.

Of course, these figures suffer from a certain amount of time bias. Crypto markets are always online, unlike the stock market which has defined trading hours. 

Defined hours render intraday analysis more relevant. For this analysis, midnight UTC signaled the end and beginning of trading periods. 

There also may be larger pumps on certain exchanges not reflected in these results.

Same-day pumps are fun, but what really matters is returns over the long haul. Bitcoin has trumped them all with up to 80 million percent gains since 2009.

XRP and dogecoin, as it turns out, have returned practically the same across their entire history — with XRP eclipsing DOGE with more than 12,600% returns after this week’s rally.

Updated Jul. 15, 2023 at 3:06 am ET: Year of ETH’s biggest pump.

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• Blockworks Daily: Unpacking crypto and the markets.
• Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
• Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
• 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
• Lightspeed: All things Solana.
• The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
• Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.