Following a remarkable performance in the first trading days of the year, CNBC anchors named XRP the best trading of 2026, arguing that it has been a quiet outperformer during the recent crypto market volatility.
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XRP Becomes Hottest Trade of the Year
CNBC’s Brian Sullivan highlighted XRP’s strong start to the year, calling the cryptocurrency the “new cryptocurrency darling” of 2026 and placing it ahead of the market’s leading asset.
During the Power Lunch, the anchor of the network confirmed that “the hottest crypto trade of the year is not Bitcoin, it is not Ether, it is XRP,” arguing that there is “a lot of money behind this trade.”
In his opening remarks, he pointed to the altcoin’s remarkable seven-day rally in recent highs. XRP has seen a remarkable performance since the start of the year, rising more than 30% from its annual open to its two-month high of $2.41 on Tuesday morning.
During this latest performance, the altcoin recently replaced BNB again to become the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, a position it lost during the December market volatility.
In addition, it has outperformed all major cryptocurrencies over the weekly period, including BTC and ETH rallies of 4.3% and 6.2% respectively. CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos weighed in on XRP’s performance in various sectors, confirming that “XRP has been very quiet for months now.”
He talked about whether XRP is taking its place as “the next cool thing to know about” or that it has a unique and useful use case that sets it apart from the leading cryptocurrencies, emphasizing its role in cross-border payments as one of its key appeals.
What’s Driving the Rally?
Sigalos cited three main reasons for the star’s strong performance this year. First, he said “the regulatory overhang is over as Ripple has completely settled its SEC battle as of August 2nd.”
Second, he asserted that people consider cryptocurrency to be “much less trading than Bitcoin or Ether,” which “proved to be true” in the first trading days of January.
For the third reason, he pointed out that “flows have persisted even during the Q4 dip,” arguing that investors continued to add funds based on XRP, while the large flow of crypto ETFs’ decreased in price.
Well, it was interesting that during the Q4 downturn, you really saw a lot of people piling into those XRP ETFs, which is exactly the opposite of what’s happening in the Bitcoin and Ether ETF space, where people are really moving with the coin’s value. But it was true that it was a way to have a high percentage jump.
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Notably, XRP funds have had an impressive performance since their launch in Q4 2025. The investment products, which were first released in November, recorded a net inflow of $1.25 billion, according to data from SoSoValue.
The ETF category has not recorded a single day of negative flows in nearly two months, with consistent inflows since going live. During the first three trading days of the year, XRP coins saw a total inflow of $78.81 million.
As of this writing, XRP is trading at $2.19, which is a 20% increase on a weekly basis.
Featured image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com
