XRP Went From 50 Cents to $3.40 After the Last Election. What History Says About the Midterms.
XRP's post-election surge stands as one of crypto's most dramatic political trades, but the setup that powered that 580% run may never exist again, and the midterms carry a very different set of conditions.
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XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) trades at $1.41 as of September 19, 2026, fluctuating between $1.39 and $1.49 on the day. The coin is down 23.14% year to date and has fallen 52.74% over the past year.
In the lead-up to the November 5, 2024 election, XRP hovered around $0.50. By mid-January 2025, it had climbed to $3.40, a 580% increase, and it peaked higher still in July 2025 at $3.65.
With the November 3 midterms approaching and XRP now trading at less than half of its January 2025 peak, what insights does the previous election provide for the upcoming one?
The Election Was the Smaller of Two Catalysts
The election wasn’t the sole catalyst for XRP’s rise. The asset had navigated regulatory challenges for years, rooted in the SEC’s December 2020 lawsuit against Ripple, and by late 2024 the market had begun to price in a more favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies in the US.
Trump’s victory, coupled with Gary Gensler’s resignation announcement, propelled XRP to $3.40 by mid-January. Market participants interpreted the resignation as a sign that the Ripple case would soon conclude, marking the limit of the election’s impact.
The larger move originated from legal developments. The settlement between Ripple and the SEC enabled XRP to reach $3.65 on July 18, 2025. When the SEC dropped its appeals in August, XRP surged another 23% to $3.38.
Two catalysts drove the run, and the larger one was legal, which decides whether a midterm can do the same work. A vote removes nothing from a docket.
XRP Fell Below $1 in August 2026
History also highlights XRP’s volatility. The coin fell 33% in February 2025 to around $2.10, recovered to its July high, then dropped 35% during the fourth quarter to close 2025 at $1.87.
The decline continued into 2026, with a January rally culminating at $2.41 before an abrupt drop to $1.11 by early February. XRP reached a 19-month low of $1.08 on June 5 and bottomed at $0.99 in August, the first sub-dollar trading since before the post-election rally commenced.
That is a 73% fall from the $3.65 cycle high. XRP has since recovered 43% off the August low to $1.41, which still leaves it 61% below that high and 63% below the $3.84 all-time high it set in January 2018.
The post-election run generated a 580% gain, and the subsequent decline warrants equal weight. Anyone using the election as a framework to predict the midterms must weigh the cyclical downturn alongside the initial surge.
XRP’s Supply Has Nearly Doubled Since 2018
One complicating factor for XRP’s price trajectory has nothing to do with politics. The number of coins available has nearly doubled since 2018, from roughly 34 billion to about 63 billion.
Ripple continues to release up to a billion XRP from escrow monthly and re-locks most of it, leading to hundreds of millions entering the market routinely over the next nine years.
This expanded supply means the same level of investment creates less upward pressure on price than it did when XRP traded at 50 cents. The 580% surge occurred within a smaller supply frame than a midterm rally would face now.
XRP has also secured commodity status, obtained spot ETFs, and introduced RLUSD, a $1.5 billion stablecoin. Those structural changes could attract the buying power a rally needs.
Can XRP Replicate Its 2024 Performance?
A replication of the post-2024 surge appears unlikely. The previous setup involved specific regulatory advancements for Ripple paired with a broad crypto market resurgence, and neither factor resets as midterms approach. Midterms historically do not produce the sweeping changes that redefine asset prices as dramatically as the last election did.
Broader market sentiment will influence XRP’s outlook more than the election date does. For XRP to reignite bullish momentum, it must hold above $1.41, convincingly surpass $2, and only then face the $3.65 zone as resistance. XRP has not traded above $2 since January 2026, and even the prior post-election rally stopped 4.9% short of the $3.84 peak it set in January 2018.
If XRP fails to trade convincingly above $2 by November 3, the midterm-catalyst argument loses credibility for this cycle, and the 2024 comparison should be retired. If it clears $2 before then, the argument earns one more month to prove the case into year-end.
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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
