Coming up with the name of the top-performing cryptocurrency of the past five years would seem to be a no-brainer. It has to be Bitcoin (BTC +1.56%), right?
Wrong. Given Bitcoin’s recent slide in price, it’s back to where it was five years ago, under $70,000. And that has given cryptocurrencies such as XRP (XRP +0.70%) a chance to catch up. XRP has now outperformed Bitcoin over the past five years.
Image source: Getty Images.
Does the math check out?
On April 1, 2021, XRP was trading for a price of just $0.57. Today, it trades at $1.32. That’s a stellar return of 118% over the past five years.
On April 1, 2021, Bitcoin was trading for a price of $59,095. Today, it trades at $68,860. That’s a modest return of 16.7% over the same period.
So, yes, purely on the basis of this basic math, XRP has outperformed Bitcoin over the past five years. But dig a little deeper, and the math starts to look, well, a little bit funky.
Today’s Change
(0.70%) $0.01
Current Price
$1.36
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$83B
Day’s Range
$1.32 – $1.36
52wk Range
$1.14 – $3.65
Volume
2.5B
Here’s a price chart of XRP over the past five years. Notice anything strange? For years, the price of XRP went absolutely nowhere. It rarely traded above the $1 mark. Then, at the end of 2024, it went absolutely ballistic.
From a price of $0.50 in November 2024, XRP skyrocketed to a price of $3.40 in January 2025. That was driven by the relentless pro-crypto hype coming out of the Trump administration and the prospect of greater regulatory clarity for XRP. Since then, the hype has faded, and XRP has retreated back to the $1 level.
So, in many ways, XRP’s outperformance over the past five years was generated entirely during a three-month period. Other than that, XRP has done little or nothing. If you held XRP in your portfolio in 2021, 2022, or 2023, you were probably close to giving up hope of it ever trading above $1. And this year, with XRP down nearly 30%, you’re again probably close to giving up on it entirely.
Bitcoin’s cyclical behavior
There’s another factor responsible for XRP’s outperformance over the past five years: Bitcoin’s historical tendency to experience cycles of boom and bust that last approximately four years each. We’re now near the end of the latest Bitcoin cycle, and Bitcoin is doing what it always has done at the end of every four-year cycle.
In short, Bitcoin has absolutely cratered in price, just like it did in 2014, 2018, and 2022. Check out the returns for Bitcoin during those years. In 2014, Bitcoin lost 46% of its value. In 2018, it lost 71% of its value. And in 2022, it lost 64% of its value.
But guess what? Bitcoin has always bounced back, better than before. But you definitely need to take a long-term approach when it comes to Bitcoin, because it can take time to recover from a serious market decline of 50% or more. As a rule of thumb, you should plan to hold Bitcoin for a minimum of five years.
Even though Bitcoin has turned in an absolutely horrid performance thus far in 2026, now is no time to abandon it. Yes, XRP’s performance over the past five years has been impressive, but I still think Bitcoin is the better long-term buy.