Here's a fun market lesson from 2025: silver, the shiny metal your grandfather might have hoarded in his basement, has absolutely demolished the digital assets that were supposed to represent the future of money. iShares Silver Trust (SLV) is up 145% this year—its best performance since 1982—while XRP (XRP) has lost 9%. The gap between these two assets tells you everything about what markets actually reward.
The Tale of Two Asset Classes
Silver is having a moment because two different groups want it desperately. Investors are buying it as a safe haven while factories need it for solar panels, electric vehicles, and data centers. That's the sweet spot: when both speculators and actual users show up at the same time.
Crypto, meanwhile, had a forgettable year. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 6% and Ethereum (ETH) fell 11%. The pattern is pretty clear. Metals have buyers who need them today, right now, to build actual things. Crypto has traders placing bets that institutional demand might show up at some point in the future.
What's Powering the Metals Surge
The macro backdrop is doing silver and gold plenty of favors. Rate-cut expectations, a weakening dollar, and geopolitical anxiety are all pushing investors toward precious metals. The dollar is heading for its steepest annual decline since 2017, which makes gold and silver cheaper for overseas buyers.
Central banks are stacking gold reserves, reducing their dollar exposure and hedging against economic turbulence. That institutional buying creates a steady bid that crypto simply doesn't have.
Silver gets an extra boost from its dual identity as both a store of value and an industrial metal. Solar panel manufacturers, EV makers, and data center builders are consuming silver faster than mines can dig it up. That supply squeeze is real, not theoretical.
The Year XRP Holders Would Rather Forget
Ripple's XRP community spent 2025 waiting for a rally to $10 that never materialized. Three separate delays kept demand on the bench. The SEC lawsuit dragged on until August 22 after a last-minute appeal by former Chair Gary Gensler. Spot XRP ETFs got pushed to November and then launched without meaningful institutional follow-through. The CLARITY Act remained stuck in Congress, delaying the regulatory clarity that banks need before they'll actually use XRP for anything.
Scarcity Versus Necessity
XRP has a fixed supply, which sounds great until you realize that scarcity doesn't matter if nobody is forced to buy the thing. Most XRP demand comes from traders betting on price appreciation, not from people who need to use it for cross-border payments or anything else.
Silver has no supply cap at all—mines can theoretically keep producing it forever—but they can't keep up with current demand. Solar panels, electronics, and nervous investors are buying silver every single day. One asset is waiting for demand to arrive someday. The other already has buyers lined up around the block.
Markets don't reward promises. They reward things people must buy. In 2025, that lesson played out in spectacular fashion.