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

XRP just pumped harder than it has ever pumped before — bar one day six years ago

article-image

WhiteBarbie/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

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.
A big purple column means a big price rally

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.

Almost the whole board is bitcoin and dogecoin

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.

Switch to log view to see XRP eclipsing dogecoin’s all-time returns

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


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Flying_Tulip.png

Research

Flying Tulip's perpetual put option provides real principal protection, but investors must pay a valuation premium today for products that have to be built over the next 24 months. This structure works best as a stablecoin substitute where the put allows continuous monitoring—accept opportunity cost in exchange for asymmetric upside if the team executes on its ambitious cross-collateral architecture.

article-image

As flows consolidate and volatility fades, finding edge now means knowing which games are still worth playing

article-image

Value distribution came to $1.9 billion distributed in Q3, though total revenues have yet to beat 2021 heights

article-image

MegaETH public sale auction ends tomorrow, and the free money machine has attracted people who like free money

article-image

With tBTC under the hood, Acre abstracts bridging and converts non-BTC rewards to bitcoin

article-image

Accountable is also eyeing mid-November for mainnet launch

article-image

“Adjusted for size, I think it may be the most successful ETP launch of all time,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says