Eight years ago, the idea of XRP overtaking Ethereum in market capitalization seemed routine – and for a brief moment in early 2018, it actually happened. A throwback post from CoinGecko on May 25, 2026, serves as a timely reminder as the balance of power among top altcoins once again looks movable. With Ethereum mired in a governance crisis, liquidity draining to new protocols, and the XRP Ledger (XRPL) making strides in real-world asset tokenization, the historical scenario is no longer a distant fantasy.
Ethereum’s internal turmoil has deepened. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly addressed community criticism over the exodus of key developers from the Ethereum Foundation and the network’s shrinking share of total fees. His “anti-marketing” stance – eschewing the high-throughput arms race – is accelerating investor flight. Meanwhile, Ripple and the XRPL are quietly cornering a sector that legacy finance understands: tokenizing real-world assets (RWA). Commercial banks like JPMorgan are increasingly using XRPL to issue tokenized bonds, solidifying its niche.
Financial flows reflect the divergence of sentiment. Last week, investors pulled $215 million from Ether ETFs, while U.S. XRP funds attracted $22 million in net inflows. But a third contender has entered the fray. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token surged 147% year-to-date to around $63, briefly pushing its fully diluted valuation past Solana’s. The protocol now controls 43% of the on-chain fee market, generating annualized revenue above $620 million. HYPE’s spot ETF recorded a record $25 million inflow on May 20, contrasting sharply with outflows from Bitcoin and Ether ETFs.
Buterin’s latest letter doubles down on a privacy- and security-centric path. The foundation, he said, will narrow its scope to “censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security” – a framework he calls CROPS. “Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity,” he wrote. The post acknowledged that the EF holds only about 0.16% of total ETH supply, valued around $408 million, and that its original mandate was fulfilled with the Merge. At least eight senior contributors have left in 2026, with five exiting in May alone, including operations lead Josh Stark and protocol researchers.
Capital has already voted with its feet. Goldman Sachs cut ETH positions by $500 million and XRP by $152 million, while entering Hyperliquid Strategies. Zcash (ZEC), once a forgotten privacy token, rallied roughly 1,400% in 2026 after Multicoin Capital disclosed a significant position built since February, citing surveillance-resistance as the thesis. ZEC overtook Cardano in market cap this month, and together with Hyperliquid and NEAR, it now forms what BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes calls crypto’s “holy trinity.”
For ETH holders, the pivot is sobering. Ether trades around $2,120, down 57% from its August 2025 peak, while XRP consolidates at 0.0006411 ETH on the weekly chart. Buterin acknowledged that community criticism had been “a great burden and pain,” and disclosed nearly 90% of his net worth is in ETH. Yet the foundation explicitly removed support for ETH-the-asset from its mandate, calling on “other heroes” to step in. The message is clear: Ethereum will not chase the TPS arms race against Solana, BNB Chain, or Tempo. Instead, it bets that one credibly neutral, censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving institutional chain will accrue more long-term value – even if that means letting traders in ZEC and HYPE get paid today while ETH holders wait.
