In the time following the massive market-wide bull run seen in in late-2017 and early-2018, XRP has been one of the worst performing altcoins, posting intense losses that have led it to underperform most of its peers.
The first quarter of 2020 was no exception to this trend either, as data reveals that it was the worst performing cryptocurrency in Q1 2020.
This weakness has come about despite multiple positive fundamental developments seen by the crypto throughout the past few months, which were clearly not enough to rally its investor base.
XRP Worst Performing Crypto of Q1 2020
It has been a rough past couple of months for the entire cryptocurrency market, and virtually all digital assets are trading down significantly from their mid-February highs that were set at the peak of the market.
XRP, however, has shown particular weakness as compared to that seen by the other top 25 cryptocurrencies, and data from Messari shows that it lost its spot as being the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization to that of Tether (USDT).
The research and analytics firm spoke about the crypto’s poor performance in a recent tweet, also adding that the alleviated token selling pressure from Ripple also did little to help bolster the token.
“XRP was the worst performer in Q1 of the top 25 assets in our currencies sector excluding bitcoin + XRP dropped out of the top 3 by marketcap as USDT ascended the ranks + Ripple’s reduction is XRP sales starting in Q3 ’19 did little to help the price,” they noted while referencing the data graph of Ripple’s token sales seen below.
Image Courtesy of Messari
Fundamental Growth Does Little to Boost the Crypto 
In spite of the signs of technical weakness from a price perspective, it is important to keep in mind that the token did see some fundamental growth over this same time period.
One of these fundamental factors referenced by Messari include the addition of an XRP perpetual swap pair on Bitmex in February, which could help provide the cryptocurrency with greater liquidity stemming from retail traders.
“In Q1, [BitMEX] also rolled out its first XRP perpetual swap contract, opening up XRP to one of the most liquid exchanges in crypto.”
The impacts of Ripple’s massive quarterly token sales reduction should not be underestimated either, as many analysts had previously pinned the cryptocurrency’s over 40% decline in 2019 on the overwhelming selling pressure stemming from the company’s offloading of their tokens.
Featured image from Unsplash.