XRP Price Mirrors Sideways Accumulation Trend From 2017, Here’s What Happened Last Time

XRP’s recent price action in 2025 was more of a dynamic movement than a simple sideways drift. After rallying strongly earlier in 2025 and pushing to new all-time highs, the cryptocurrency has spent much of the recent months digesting those gains through pullbacks and consolidations.

That structure was referenced in a chart shared on the social media platform X by Steph, which proposed that XRP’s current market behavior is beginning to resemble the long compression phase that preceded its breakout in 2017.

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XRP Completes Nearly 400 Days Of Sideways Accumulation

According to Steph’s analysis, XRP has just completed roughly 393 days of sideways accumulation, a duration that almost perfectly matches the 395-day consolidation phase it went through between 2016 and 2017.

During that earlier cycle, XRP spent months moving within a relative range, producing a choppy price action. This kind of extended consolidation reflects a balance between buyers and sellers, where neither side is strong enough to force a decisive trend. 

In 2017, that balance led to a transition into another technical formation of a descending channel before breaking out. The current setup in 2024-2025, at least structurally, shows XRP once again spending an unusually long time building a base in a range. A more detailed look at the chart shows another important similarity with the transition into another descending channel. 

Back in the 2016-2017 cycle, XRP transitioned from sideways movement into a descending channel that gradually pushed the price lower over several months. That downward-sloping structure ultimately resolved with a sharp breakout to the upside.

The 2024-2025 chart shows XRP moving through a comparable descending channel, with price compressing toward the lower boundary before showing early signs of a breakout while attention is still low.

XRP Price Comparison. Source: @Steph_iscrypto on X

What To Expect For XRP

The 2016-2017 chart segment above shows XRP trading for roughly 395 days in a broad sideways range between about $0.005 and $0.01. Once XRP broke out of the descending channel in early 2017, price moved up very fast, first reclaiming $0.01, then surging past $0.03 and $0.05 within a few days. The expansion did not stop there, as XRP eventually rallied into the $0.40 region later that year, cementing XRP’s first 5,000% move in its history.

The 2024-2025 chart shows XRP peaking near the $3.40 zone before entering a sideways consolidation phase throughout 2025. Price action is now in the descending channel, which is gradually compressing around the $1.70-$1.90 area.

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That channel now looks similar to the location where XRP was in 2017 before its breakout, adjusted for scale. A comparable 5,000% move from the current zone of price action would mathematically project the XRP price to about $100.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView