Prediction: These 2 Popular Cryptocurrencies Will Plunge by 50% (or More) in 2026

The cryptocurrency industry entered 2025 on a high, with the total value of all coins and tokens in circulation sitting at about $3.5 trillion. After a few ups and downs throughout the year, that value has fallen to less than $3 trillion as I write this, led by declines in some of the industry's most speculative tokens.

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) fell by 20% in 2025 and has declined 49% from its recent high. Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), on the other hand, hasn't set a new high in four years, and it's declined by 67% for 2025.

Both cryptocurrencies face structural issues that I predict could result in further declines of 50% (or more) this year. Read on.

Image source: Getty Images.

XRP faces a series of headwinds

A company called Ripple created a payment network called Ripple Payments, which lets banks settle cross-border transactions with one another directly and instantly. Ripple launched XRP to serve as a bridge currency to standardize those transactions. For example, a British bank might send XRP to a Japanese bank instead of sending British pounds, thus eliminating costly foreign-exchange conversion fees.

XRP has a total supply of 100 billion tokens. About 60.5 billion are in circulation, and the other 39.5 billion are held by Ripple, which slowly releases them to meet demand from financial institutions. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple in 2020 because of this arrangement, arguing that XRP should be classified as a financial security like any other instrument issued by a company -- whether a stock or a bond.

The lawsuit threatened to derail Ripple's business model, which pressured the price of XRP. But the SEC agreed to drop the case and all pending appeals in August as part of President Donald Trump's pro-crypto policy agenda, ending the five-year legal battle for good. This sent XRP barreling to a seven-year high.

Despite the positive news, XRP can't outrun its structural issues. First, banks don't have to use the token to benefit from instant cross-border transfers through Ripple Payments, because the network also supports the use of fiat currency. That means the success of Ripple Payments won't necessarily boost the value of XRP.

Second, Ripple launched its own stablecoin at the end of 2024 called RippleUSD. Stablecoins offer practically zero volatility, so they are better for making payments compared to traditional cryptocurrencies like XRP, which experience significant swings in value over short periods of time.

Without a reliable organic source of demand, XRP is at the mercy of speculative investors, which isn't a recipe for sustainable long-term upside. After the token set its previous all-time high in 2018, it plunged by more than 90% in less than a year.

Since it's already down 49% from its most recent peak, I think history could repeat itself. That leaves room for a further decline of at least 50% in 2026.

Shiba Inu's relevance continues to fade

Shiba Inu was launched in 2020 by an anonymous developer named Ryoshi who wanted to emulate the success of the cryptocurrency industry's original meme token, Dogecoin. It performed beyond Ryoshi's wildest expectations, delivering a staggering return of 45,278,000% during 2021, which would have been enough to turn a perfectly timed investment of just $3 into $1 million.

But meme tokens typically don't have any utility, so once investor sentiment turns negative, they tend to lose most of their value. True to form, Shiba Inu had plummeted more than 90% by mid-2022.

The only way for a cryptocurrency like Shiba Inu to build sustainable value is to increase adoption, whether as a payment mechanism or as a store of value. Unfortunately, just 1,112 merchants around the world are willing to accept the token in exchange for goods and services (according to crypto directory Cryptwerk), so it isn't having much success on that front. It's not a good store of value, either, considering it hasn't set a new all-time high since 2021.

Shiba Inu also has a glaring supply problem that will be a barrier to another historic bull run. There are 589.2 trillion tokens in circulation, which means even at the current price of $0.000007 per token, the ecosystem has a market capitalization of $4.2 billion. If it rose to a more typical price of $1, it would then have a market cap of $589.2 trillion, making it the most valuable asset in the entire world by a wide margin.

That is obviously unrealistic, and it raises the question: If Shiba Inu can't find an organic source of demand, and speculative investors don't have a probable chance of generating another historic return, then who is left to buy the token? This conundrum is the reason it lost more than 60% of its value in 2025, and I predict a decline of 50% or more for 2026.

Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.