2 Cryptocurrencies Up 160% or More in 2026 to Buy Instead of XRP

For long-term investors, Zcash (CRYPTO: ZEC) and NEAR Protocol (CRYPTO: NEAR) are better buys than XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), and it's mostly because of their supply policies. As of Oct. 8, Zcash was up 120% this year, and NEAR gained 190%, while XRP has fallen 28%.

But big gains tend to have many causes, and 2026's performance scoreboard is not a forecast. Let's dig into why these two coins are preferable to XRP.

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XRP isn't routing value to holders

A coin's price tends to rise when its network activity results in value being routed to holders through mechanisms like destroying tokens, performing buybacks, or paying out excess fees. That link between a blockchain or crypto service's usage and increases to holder value is central to what gives a cryptocurrency value, and it's also one of the most important themes in this crypto market cycle so far.

XRP's network destroys every transaction fee, but those fees are minuscule per transaction. Only 14.4 million of the original 100 billion XRP has been destroyed over its entire existence so far. It would take an outrageous amount of network activity for a prolonged period to create a meaningful amount of pressure on the coin's supply such that its price increased.

Ripple, which issues XRP, can unlock up to 1 billion XRP monthly from escrow, and 32 billion XRP were locked in September 2026. Data from CoinGecko shows that XRP's circulating supply rose from 59.9 billion on Oct. 7, 2025, to 63.1 billion XRP a year later; its holders got effectively nothing to offset that dilution, and the same will likely be true for future 12-month periods too.

Zcash is taking notes from Bitcoin

Zcash is a privacy coin whose network can optionally hide payment details and the identities of transactors. When users seeking to hide their capital buy Zcash, they create demand for it, and then that demand meets a finite supply, the price tends to rise.

Its supply, much like Bitcoin's, is capped at 21 million coins, 80.8% of which are already in circulation. The coin's issuance via mining is currently still expanding its circulating supply at a pace of 3.9% per year, but that pace will be cut in half in the coin's halving, which is expected to occur about November 2028.

One new upgrade to Zcash, which is targeted to launch on Nov. 5, 2026, will create a new system that uses 60% of its network transaction fees to remove coins from circulation rather than pay them all to miners immediately. The retained fees are then only allowed to be paid out to miners starting in 2031.

So, while that won't help to create the same conditions of long run scarcity enjoyed by Bitcoin, it will help to constrict the available supply over the medium term, especially if transaction volume and the size of median transactions continue to rise over time. That could in turn help to support higher prices, which is another factor in its favor versus XRP.

The case for buying NEAR

NEAR has no supply cap, but it cut its maximum annual issuance from 5% to 2.5% on Oct. 30, 2025.

NEAR is a cross-blockchain protocol, and its flagship service is Intents, which facilitate users' cross-chain token swap requests.

In a nutshell, it automatically handles the annoyance of needing to shop around for the cheapest safe-to-use piece of crypto infrastructure to enable spending of money that's stored on one blockchain on a different blockchain. Lest investors think that's a trivial task, keep in mind that the stakes of getting the infrastructure choice wrong could be enormous; some crypto bridges charge a fee that exceeds 2% of the sum being transferred, and others have been known to get hacked or otherwise lose funds in transit.

Since February 2026, revenue generated from NEAR Intents has been used to buy NEAR on the open market, constricting its supply and supporting higher prices along the way. Those buybacks were worth $3.1 million in Q3 2026, up from $760,000 in Q1, so NEAR is also clearly seeing more demand over time.

And, given that crypto users, investors, and developers will need to efficiently transition their capital from blockchain to blockchain, a process that's currently and historically a real hassle without using NEAR, there's already a source of demand that's proven to be durable. In other words, this coin has what appears to be a good fit with its market.

XRP, in contrast, was originally envisioned as a bridge currency for making money transfers across international borders. But, that hasn't quite panned out for XRP as well as NEAR's vision has, which is another reason why it's probably better to invest in NEAR.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, NEAR Protocol, and Zcash. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, NEAR Protocol, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.