Ether and XRP outpaced Bitcoin as January’s crypto rebound broadened

The verified market record

On January 18, 2020, the cryptocurrency rebound broadened beyond Bitcoin. Kraken’s daily market report marked bitcoin at $8,904, up 0.26% for its reporting period, while ether stood at $176.10, up 3.91%, and XRP at $0.2461, up 4.12%. The exchange reported $139 million traded across all of its crypto and fiat markets, including $53.2 million attributed to BTC, $35.8 million to ETH and $9 million to XRP.

CoinMarketCap’s January 18 historical snapshot independently showed the same hierarchy, although its aggregation window produced different figures: bitcoin at $8,942.81 with a 0.11% 24-hour gain, ether at $175.37 with a 2.08% gain and XRP at $0.2433 with a 1.60% gain. Bitcoin remained the largest crypto asset, with a reported market capitalization of $162.48 billion. Ether ranked second among non-stable assets at $19.17 billion, and XRP ranked third at $10.62 billion.

Those records support a narrow conclusion: Bitcoin was holding near $9,000 while two of the other largest liquid crypto assets rose faster over their respective daily measurement windows. They do not establish why buyers acted, and the differing percentage changes show why a crypto “close” must be tied to a named source.

Measuring the January advance

The change from January 1 makes the scale of the move clearer. Kraken’s January 1 report marked bitcoin at $7,224, ether at $132.00 and XRP at $0.1935. Comparing those marks with Kraken’s January 18 figures yields increases of approximately 23.3% for bitcoin, 33.4% for ether and 27.2% for XRP. These are Coinburn calculations from two Kraken daily reports, not returns from an investable index and not proof of uninterrupted appreciation between the endpoints.

Kraken also reported $34.4 million of exchange-wide turnover on January 1, versus $139 million on January 18. The later figure was about 4.04 times the earlier one. That comparison is venue-specific and covers all markets identified by Kraken, not global spot volume. It can indicate heavier activity on that exchange, but it cannot be generalized to every venue.

CoinMarketCap’s separate snapshots tell a similar story. From January 1 to January 18, its quoted bitcoin price rose from $7,200.17 to $8,942.81, or approximately 24.2%. Ether increased from $130.80 to $175.37, approximately 34.1%, while XRP moved from $0.1927 to $0.2433, approximately 26.3%. Small differences from the Kraken calculations are expected because CoinMarketCap aggregated multiple markets while Kraken described its own exchange.

Why the broadening mattered

The January 18 record mattered less as a single round-number price event than as evidence that the early-2020 recovery was not confined to Bitcoin. Ether’s larger endpoint gain and its stronger January 18 daily move showed capital repricing another major network asset. XRP’s advance provided a second example, even as several other large assets fell sharply: Kraken recorded bitcoin cash down 3.31%, dash down 9.80%, zcash down 9.86% and ethereum classic down 14.2% for its daily period.

That dispersion argues against describing January 18 as a uniform market surge. It was a selective session inside a strong start to the year. Market capitalization rankings also measure circulating supply multiplied by price; they are not equivalent to cash invested, liquidity available or money entering an asset.

What remained uncertain on January 18

Crypto traded continuously across exchanges, with no consolidated closing auction. Kraken’s report did not state a timestamp beside each displayed mark, while CoinMarketCap’s surviving page identifies a historical snapshot and 24-hour changes without exposing every underlying venue trade in the table. CME’s Bitcoin Reference Rate offered a distinct institutional benchmark, calculated from major spot-exchange trade flow during a specified window and published once daily, but that methodology is not interchangeable with either source used for the endpoint calculations.

The defensible event-day reading is therefore limited: by January 18, Bitcoin had recovered to the high-$8,000s, while ether and XRP had outpaced it from January 1 on both surviving datasets. Any causal explanation, claim of fresh capital inflow or assertion that the move predicted a lasting cycle would require evidence beyond these price and turnover records.