Can Ethereum (ETH) Pull a Ripple (XRP) This Cycle?

TL;DR

• Despite the recent minor resurgance, ETH continues to be among the biggest underperformers in the past several months, failing to chart a new all-time high and losing a massive chunk of its value.
• However, one analyst believes this could be a blessing in disguise for the second-largest cryptocurrency as it can pull off a big XRP-like rally.

Can ETH Do an XRP?

Although it failed to near, match, or break its all-time high of over $4,800 this time around, ETH also went on the offensive after the US elections. It skyrocketed from $2,400 to a multi-year peak of its own at just over $4,000. However, it couldn’t keep the momentum going and started to lose value rapidly in Q1 2025, which became its worst in quite some time.

April saw more pain as ether plunged to $1,400, thus erasing roughly seven years of gains. Despite recovering to almost $1,800 as of press time, ETH is still below the pre-election levels. It’s down by nearly $2,000 since July when the Ethereum ETFs went live in the US.

The painful landscape is visible from a lot of angles – whales selling, Galaxy Digital replacing ETH with SOL, large withdrawals from the ETFs, and so on. However, some analysts see this darkness around the Ethereum ecosystem as a potential long-term entry.

Remember when $XRP‘s price lagged and CT thought it was dead?$ETH‘s price is lagging now.

Institutional demand will soon rise.

Don’t fade.

DYOR pic.twitter.com/e4WftuxIBt

— CryptoBusy (@CryptoBusy) April 25, 2025

In contrast, XRP became one of the rockstars of the late 2024/early 2025 run, surging by triple digits from $0.6 to almost $3.4. Although it still couldn’t break its 2018 ATH, it came inches away. Despite the recent market-wide correction, Ripple’s cross-border token is still well above $2 and has narrowed the gap with ETH in terms of market cap.

CryptoBusy compared XRP’s sideways price movements, which went on for years, to ETH’s lagging performance as of now and predicted that “institutional demand” for the latter will soon rise.

When is The Next Leg Up?

Wess told their 100,000 followers on X that ETH inflows are “spiking,” adding that the market is yet to catch up. The self-proclaimed “meme coin degen” said Ethereum just witnessed its biggest daily inflow into accumulation addresses on April 22, which suggests that “some serious players are clearly loading up while price hovers around $1,750.”

They added that on-chain activity is picking up, with active addresses jumping by 10% in two days. At the same time, DEX volumes are “stuck,” DeFi still “feels asleep,” and broader usage “hasn’t followed the ETH inflows just yet.” Consequently, Wess asked whether this is a “quiet” whale accumulation before the next leg up or “are we just catching knives in a longer downtrend.”

$ETH inflows are spiking… but does the market care (yet)?

Ethereum just saw its biggest-ever daily inflow into accumulation addresses: 449K ETH on April 22 alone.

Some serious players are clearly loading up while price hovers around $1,750.

Onchain activity is picking up too… pic.twitter.com/lFMl4vjPeG

— Wess (@WessWeb3) April 24, 2025