Crypto traders are used to seeing a price surge in non-serious cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin ( DOGE ) as a sign of market froth . Now it looks as though XRP , the payments-focused cryptocurrency, can also be used as an indicator for bull-market peaks in bitcoin ( BTC ). Unlike meme tokens like DOGE and shiba inu ( SHIB ), XRP has utility. It is used by Ripple to facilitate cross-border transactions, which places it in a bucket different from the memecoins. Even so, since 2017, XRP has been a contrary indicator for bitcoin bulls, tending to rally— often soaring several hundred percent in a short time — in the final stages of BTC bull runs, marking the point at which bitcoin ultimately peaked. XRP experienced a remarkable 10-fold rally from December 2017 to early 2018, coinciding with bitcoin's peak at around $20,000, before entering a bear market that lasted almost a year. A similar near-vertical spike in XRP occurred in early 2021, marking the peak of another bull market in bitcoin. And XRP's surge of approximately 240% in late 2024 foreshadowed bitcoin's bull market peak above $109,000, followed by a decline below $80,000. As the saying goes: "Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a trend." The next time BTC is running hot, savvy traders may want to keep an eye on XRP for potential signals regarding the end of the bull run.
