XRP Investment Calculator
What would buying XRP have been worth? Pick a plan and a start date and this replays it against real daily XRP closes.
What XRP actually did, in the data this page replays
Measured from the 3,055 daily closes this page replays — 4 May 2018 to 13 September 2026, from Binance. Figures are bounded by that window, not by the asset’s whole life.
| History available | 8 years and 4 months (from Binance) |
|---|---|
| Bought on the first day, held to the last | 1.53× |
| Highest close in this window | $3.55 on 22 July 2025 |
| Where it sits against that high | 61.6% below |
| Deepest fall | −85%, 5 May 2018 → 12 March 2020 |
| Time to get back to that peak | 13 months after the low — 5 April 2021 |
| Separate falls of 50% or more | 3 |
| Days spent more than 20% below a previous peak | 93.9% |
| Best calendar year | 2021: +249.4% |
| Worst calendar year | 2022: -60.2% |
| Annualised volatility | 100.9% |
XRP year by year
First close to last close each year. 2018 and 2026 are partial — the data starts mid-2018 and 2026 is still running.
| Year | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | -60.8% | partial year |
| 2019 | -46.5% | |
| 2020 | +13.7% | |
| 2021 | +249.4% | best full year |
| 2022 | -60.2% | worst full year |
| 2023 | +81.8% | |
| 2024 | +231% | |
| 2025 | -21% | |
| 2026 | -27.5% | partial year |
The part the calculator does not show you
Held from the first day in this data to the last, XRP returned 1.53×. That headline is the easy part. The number underneath it is that the position spent 93.9% of all days more than 20% below a previous peak — so for most of the time you owned it, you were looking at a figure lower than one you had already seen.
The deepest fall took XRP down 85%, from $0.9028 on 5 May 2018 to $0.1355 on 12 March 2020 — 22 months of falling. Getting back to that peak took a further 13 months, reached on 5 April 2021. Add those together and the round trip was 2 years and 11 months — the length of time someone who bought at the top had to hold before they were merely even again.
100.9% annualised volatility is ordinary for a major crypto asset and still several times a stock index. All XRP calculators →
Frequently asked questions
＋Would buying XRP on the first day of this data and holding have made money?
Yes — 1.53× from 4 May 2018 to 13 September 2026. The figure is real but it is also the single luckiest entry available in this window, and it required holding through a fall of 85% on the way. Set the calculator to a date you might plausibly have chosen instead and the answer usually changes a great deal.
＋What is the worst XRP has fallen?
85% in this data, from 5 May 2018 down to 12 March 2020 — 22 months of falling. It took a further 13 months to get back to that peak, on 5 April 2021, so the full round trip was 2 years and 11 months. Bear in mind our XRP series starts in 2018; a deeper fall before that date would not appear here.
＋How often does XRP lose half its value?
3 separate falls of 50% or more appear in this data, and the position spent 93.9% of all days more than 20% below a previous peak. A drop of that size is not an exceptional event for this asset — it is a recurring feature of the record, which is the thing to size a position around.
＋What were XRP's best and worst years?
2021 was the best at +249.4%, and 2022 the worst at -60.2%. The gap between those two is the reason a single average annual return is a poor description of this asset: almost nobody experiences the average, they experience one of the two extremes depending on when they bought.
＋Is 8 years and 4 months of data enough to trust this backtest?
It is among the longer records available here — 8 years and 4 months covering several complete cycles, which is enough for the drawdown and recovery figures to carry real weight. It is still one path that already happened, and the next sequence of prices has no obligation to resemble it.
What to keep in mind for XRP
XRP tends to trade sideways for long stretches and then move violently on legal or listing news, which makes stop placement harder than for BTC or ETH.
XRP Ledger fees are a fraction of a cent and are burned rather than paid to validators, so on-chain cost is rarely a factor — exchange fees and spreads dominate.
A backtest is one path that already happened. It shows what this plan produced through the exact sequence of prices XRP went through — not what a similar plan will produce through a sequence nobody has seen yet.