XRP beats Bitcoin in two-year return stretch

XRP slipped 1.54% in the past 24 hours to extend a choppy stretch and a week-long struggle to revisit its 2026 peak near $2.40, while Bitcoin kept last week’s locked range of trading between $89,000 and $95,000. While short-term price action has been muted, analysts argue that Ripple’s native token has quietly outpaced Bitcoin since March 2024.

Trader Dark Defender published a multi-year XRP/BTC chart on X on Monday, which showed XRP’s sustained relative strength has been higher than the king cryptocurrency for almost two years. According to the chart, XRP has witnessed an uptrend against Bitcoin even during periods when the altcoin market’s momentum weakened.

XRP has been quietly outperforming BTC since March 2024.

On the 6-month XRP/BTC chart, momentum is clearly shifting. Structure favours continuation, not a one-off move.

2026 could mark a major expansion phase for XRP relative to Bitcoin.

Rising pair = rising XRP

Smart money… pic.twitter.com/3NRSKSTOQ3

— Dark Defender (@DefendDark) January 11, 2026

The market watcher explained that XRP’s recent rebound to $2.38 was followed by a rejection near the lower boundary of its $2.25 support zone, a pattern he believes is similar to cycles that preceded a price charge to the upper side.

XRP price up 300% since 2024, BTC up by 42%

In Dark Defender’s XRP/BTC six-month chart, XRP’s Fibonacci projections point to potential extensions of 161%, 261%, 361%, and more than 420% from the base against historical breakout points. These extensions are rising close to the 0.00002487 BTC region, a level not seen since XRP’s previous cycle highs.

Looking at the two coins’ performance for the timeframe in question, XRP has gone up by about 331%, while Bitcoin’s increase is a meagre 42%. XRP was trading near $0.47 as the latter changed hands around $63,000 at the time. At current levels, XRP trades around $2.03 as Bitcoin sits near $90,000. 

The chart’s extrapolated scenario, as predicted by Dark Defender, places XRP at $13.60 alongside a hypothetical BTC price of $136,000, although those figures are purely illustrative.

After a brief breakout above the 2,400 satoshi zone last week, XRP ran into heavy resistance at the 200-day moving average and reversed, erasing the gains and falling back into a congested range below $2.05. 

A failure to hold above moving averages, combined with rejection at horizontal resistance, could force holders to sell their positions just before the coin corrects to price levels below $2. If XRP loses support at the 2,200 satoshi level, the XRP/BTC pair could slide toward the 2,000 satoshi demand floor seen in previous pullbacks.

BTC, ETH price performance links severed

Some analysts have been tracking Ethereum’s performance against Bitcoin in previous cycles. These two coins have impacted the rest of the market for over a decade. 

In both 2017 and 2021, Ethereum breaking out versus Bitcoin led to an explosive move for XRP. In 2024, when Ethereum bled against Bitcoin, XRP rallied to defy the historical pattern. Community member Bird XRPL believes this decoupling means XRP no longer depends on Ether’s strength against Bitcoin.

“We’re now back at the exact ETH/BTC area where both previous explosions started… And on the zoomed in chart a breakout looks imminent… Potentially this week. We now know XRP can run alone… but if ETH vs BTC finally flips up, that’s when true price discovery usually follows,” they wrote on X.

Chartist “The Great Mattsby” also noted that XRP/BTC is approaching a break above the monthly Ichimoku cloud for the first time since 2018. A confirmed move above the cloud came during periods where XRP outperformed Bitcoin over extended timeframes.

At the same time, analyst TheChartNerd surmised that both the weekly 20-period exponential moving average and the middle regression band of the Gaussian Channel are near $2.26, where XRP bears have pushed back bulls repeatedly, suggesting sellers are active.

XRP is now consolidating after a strong advance in the first week of the year, and its price action has compressed into “a digestion phase.” The token’s support is clustered around $2.00, while resistance sits between $2.28 and $2.35. 

Crypto markets are still factoring in what happened over the weekend between the White House and the Federal Reserve. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the Trump administration had threatened him with a criminal indictment for making renovations at the central bank’s headquarters, Cryptopolitan reported. 

President Donald Trump has not been happy about the Fed’s policy stance since his 2025 inauguration, and labeled Powell a “numbskull” and asked Washington to increase its influence over monetary policy.

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