XRP was created by Ripple to standardize transactions in the company’s payments network, so the cryptocurrency has a genuine use case. Ripple Payments enables banks to transact directly across borders, delivering instant settlements and reducing foreign exchange costs. By using XRP through Ripple Payments, the banks can also cut out costly foreign exchange fees. Instead of an American bank sending U.S. dollars to an Italian bank, it can send XRP instead which would incur a transaction fee of just 0.00001 coins — or a fraction of one U.S. cent. But in 2020, Ripple was hit with a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which threatened to derail its business model.
The legal battle weighed on the price of XRP for years, but investors found hope when Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2024, because he campaigned on a pro-crypto agenda. In July 2025, XRP hit a new high for the first time in seven years in anticipation of an upcoming settlement between Ripple and the SEC, which was then made official in August. With the legal shackles removed, XRP should — in theory — have a green light to trend higher from here. Ripple launched its own stablecoin called Ripple USD (RLUSD) in late 2024, which is better suited for transactions because it experiences almost no volatility.
Unlike XRP, Bitcoin isn’t frequently used in payments. It isn’t very popular among banks, and according to crypto directory Cryptwerk, just 6,673 businesses around the world are willing to accept it in exchange for goods and services. Instead, the cryptocurrency’s value is typically driven higher by the investment community. Bitcoin is fully decentralized, so no person, company, or government can control it.
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