XRP outperforms Solana to surpass $2 for the first time since 2018, while Ethereum price hits a 6-month high

XRP continued its weekend jump into Sunday, breaking $2.00 for the first time in nearly seven years and surpassing Solana in market capitalization, while Ethereum hit a six-month high.

The price of XRP is currently at $2.16 as of this writing, its highest price since January 2018 and the first time it has exceeded $2.00 in the same period. XRP is up 15% on the day, bringing its weekly gain to 54%. The asset’s price has quadrupled in the last 30 days and is up 318% in this time frame.

With a current market cap of $134 billion, XRP has edged ahead of Solana to become the fourth most valuable digital asset overall. Solana’s market cap is currently around $112 billion.

As Decipher As reported yesterday and over the past few weeks, XRP is seeing a stronger rise than most major assets, driven in large part by optimism about its regulatory future. President-elect Donald Trump ran on a pro-crypto platform, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chief 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 developed by Ripple’s founders and used in its money transfer services – facing an uncertain future in the United States. However, the impending regime change has given investors confidence that XRP will face fewer challenges in the future and could be adopted for spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other financial use cases.

XRP is still about 41% below its all-time high of $3.40 in January 2018, but again, it is closer than it has been in almost seven years.

Of course, all leading cryptocurrencies have seen rising prices in recent weeks since Trump’s election victory, although Ethereum (ETH) has lagged behind Bitcoin and other coins in recent months.

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

Despite this, the price remains relatively unchanged on the day, up just 0.4% at the time of writing, as the price has since fallen to $3,707. Bitcoin is also roughly unchanged on the day with a current price of $97,200.