Bitcoin Is Down 7% This Year and XRP Is Down 21%. Which Recovers First?
Bitcoin and XRP are both clawing back losses in 2026, but one faces a much steeper climb and depends on a single Senate vote to close the gap. The coin that recovers first may surprise you.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) trades near $81,275, down 7% since the start of the year, while the XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) price trades near $1.45, down 21%. Both cryptos are currently in the green, but down for 2026, and XRP has three times the ground to make up.
Over the past month the XRP price has gained 37% and Bitcoin 26%, showing XRP is closing the gap in percentage terms even though it started much further down. So which one coin clears its year-to-date loss first, and what would have to happen for that recovery to hold?
Why the Bitcoin Price Is Down 7% This Year
The Bitcoin price began 2026 near $87,498 and now trades near $81,275, because money stayed expensive for most of the year. The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.79% on September 2, the high of the past year, and at that level savers move money out of assets that pay nothing, since they can earn 4.79% on government debt with almost no risk. The Federal Reserve has held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% since December, so short-term cash still pays too.
However, the money supply has kept growing. M2, which counts cash, checking deposits, savings and money market funds, reached a record $23.22 trillion in July, its 27th straight monthly increase, and it has added $862.7 billion since January. A growing money supply has historically lifted Bitcoin, because the coin’s supply is fixed, and that growth has partly offset the pressure from yields.
So Bitcoin needs Treasury yields to ease back and institutional buyers to keep adding through the spot ETFs before it can recover in full. The VIX, which measures how much volatility traders expect in the S&P 500, closed at 15.20 on September 2 against a March high of 31.05, and calm equity markets usually help Bitcoin too.
Why the XRP Price Is Down 21% This Year
The XRP price began 2026 near $1.84 and trades near $1.45 today, because Washington still has not settled how to regulate it. The Senate is scheduled to hold a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15, the procedural step that ends debate and needs sixty senators before the bill can move to a floor vote. A passed CLARITY Act would give payment tokens a defined status under U.S. law, which XRP has waited years for.
XRP has rallied 37% over the past month and 5% over the past week, and much of that probably reflects traders positioning for a favorable cloture outcome. When a rally runs on expectation, the risk is that the vote disappoints and the same traders sell, which would give back a large share of the move.
Moreover, XRP is down 48% over the past year against Bitcoin’s 27%, so its starting point for any recovery is much lower.
How Much Ground XRP Has to Make Up
The XRP price has to travel further than the Bitcoin price to get back to breakeven, and the arithmetic makes it worse. A 7% loss takes an 8% gain to erase, but a 21% loss takes a 27% gain, because the recovery is measured from the smaller base. So XRP needs three and a half times the move Bitcoin does.
However, XRP also lacks the buyers Bitcoin has. Bitcoin has spot ETFs bringing institutional money in every session, and it has settled regulatory treatment in the U.S. XRP has neither in the same form, and its price reacts sharply to legislative news because a single Senate vote could change who is allowed to hold it.
So XRP would need the September 15 cloture vote to clear sixty senators, and it would then need buyers who could not touch the token under earlier legal uncertainty to step in. The first looks plausible, and the second would only follow if the first delivers.
Which Coin Recovers First?
The Bitcoin price could recover first, since it needs a smaller move, it has institutional buyers in place, and the Federal Reserve is closer to easing yields than Congress is to passing the CLARITY Act.
However, XRP could overtake Bitcoin if the September 15 cloture vote clears sixty senators and the bill advances, because the traders who drove the 37% one-month rally would most likely add on the news and pull in buyers who had stayed out. If cloture fails, XRP would most likely give back a large part of the month’s move, and Bitcoin’s lead would widen.
So XRP could win the race only if the CLARITY Act clears cloture on September 15. Otherwise, Bitcoin would most likely get back to where it started the year first.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst who's spent nearly a decade making blockchain understandable—no easy task when most whitepapers read like fever dreams. He writes for 24/7 Wall St., covering Bitcoin, altcoins, and crypto market analysis for investors. Before crypto, he was a tech writer (back when explaining "the cloud" was peak innovation). Since 2018, he's written for CoinTelegraph, Yahoo Finance, The Block, Cryptonews, Zypto, Rain, and more—basically anywhere people want crypto news without the headache. Sam runs MacLabs Marketing, a content agency for crypto brands tired of sounding like AI wrote their website. He also publishes free crypto education on his site for Web3 enthusiasts who think "gas fees" is a typo. When he's not writing or staring at charts, Sam's either: - Watching anime (currently convinced One Piece has better tokenomics than most altcoins) - At the gym sculpting himself into a Greek god - Listening to the music your mum warned you only bad boys listen to Connect: LinkedIn | Email | MacLabs Marketing
