At present, we observe the two top Made in the US projects. Ripple (XRP) and Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR). So, which one will do better for the rest of 2025? Which one would you choose? Let’s find out which one we picked.
Current Trends
If we put them next to each other, Ripple and Hedera, then we should first observe how they have done recently. To do this, we’ll look at two time periods. First, we’ll check how they did over the past year. Then, we’ll see how much they’ve gone up or down in 2025 so far. After that, we’ll compare the results.
XRP
Ripple’s $XRP has had a massive increase in the last 12 months. It’s risen by a massive 401% in that time. Out of the top 300 coins, $XRP is the 8th best performer in the last year. It did better than Sui, Monero, and even Bitcoin, which went up 65% over the past year. The only non-meme coin that did better is Virtuals Protocol.
And we observe in the chart that the surge begins in mid to late November. This lines up with Trump clearly winning the election. That also means it’s likely the next SEC will settle the XRP case and be easier to work with. And yes, both of those things are true. The growing certainty about $XRP’s future because of the expected settlement has been a big boost for the XRP community.
Returns in the past 5 months are better but more limited. Like I mentioned, the big jump started in November. On January 1, $XRP was priced at $2.32. Today, it’s at $2.54, that’s a return of 8.6%. That’s still a solid gain, especially in a market that’s been all over the place, with things like Trump’s tariff policies causing chaos. So $XRP has returned 450% over the past year and 8.6% so far in 2025. Now let’s look at Hedera.
HBAR
Let’s observe how Hedera (HBAR) did. We know it did not do great over the past year, but how well did it actually do? Hedera’s $HBAR had a pretty strong 91% return in the last 12 months. The biggest jump happened from mid to late November and continued into mid-December. Since then, $HBAR has not really followed a clear trend. It’s been moving between 15 cents and a recent high of 37 cents. That’s a big range, but the price has not been going in one clear direction. The strong support level just under 15 cents held firm, and since then, $HBAR has been slowly and steadily climbing.
For 2025 so far, on January 1st, the $HBAR price was 29.4c. Right now, the price is 21 cents, which means it’s dropped almost 30%. So $HBAR’s returns are 91% over the last year and -30% so far in 2025. That might seem like a win for Ripple, but is it really? Let’s find out.
Recent Updates and What’s Next
On the XRP front, current news is mainly focused on acquisitions. First, it’s a big acquisition of Hidden Road. This lets them use a top global broker to handle big trades for institutions.
The second point is Ripple’s offer to buy Circle, the company behind USDC, which wasn’t accepted. Some people, like the XRP community, say this is to take over the stablecoin market. Others say it’s because Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, isn’t doing well. It might do better in the future, but right now it has less than 50 users a day and fewer than 100 transactions daily. It’s not doing well. Ripple needs a strong stablecoin to help with its digital currency projects for governments in developing countries.
On the Hedera side, they are focusing on real-world assets (RWA) with a new private chain that lets regulated assets list following the rules. It will work well with stablecoins and digital currencies like CBDCs. The full launch is planned for next quarter.
Tokenomics
Surprisingly, even though Chris Larsen and other Ripple insiders keep selling $XRP to regular investors, Ripple still owns a large amount of it. And after all these years, only 58.5 billion out of the nearly 100 billion $XRP are in circulation, that’s just 59%. This number should be a lot higher by now.
On the other hand, Hedera has its holders describing it this way. It has a complete 84% of its 50 billion total tokens currently in circulation. This is the kind of thing we expect from two projects that have been around for a long time.
Hedera has a pre-planned token release plan, so holders know what to expect. Its Governing Council, which controls all the validators as well, controls the emission schedule.
Like $XRP with its past of selling large amounts to regular investors, $HBAR’s main complaint is that it’s a restricted network overseen by validators with permission and not an open, permissionless chain.
So, even though both projects are strong, you still have to choose which one you prefer.
Conclusion
So, who do we think will do better in the second half of 2025? I believe that without a big new partnership or a major government client, Ripple has probably already gotten most of the benefits from the SEC settlement for $XRP. Both Hedera and Ripple work with governments and on digital currencies, and they even do some of this work together. So, I don’t think either one has a big advantage over the other.
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