Ethereum Is Up 31% in Thirty Days and XRP 33%. Which Is the Better Buy Before the Fed Meets?

Ethereum Is Up 31% in Thirty Days and XRP 33%. Which Is the Better Buy Before the Fed Meets?

Sam Daodu

Tue, September 8, 2026 at 3:49 PM GMT+3 6 min read

Quick Read

• Ethereum trades around $2,485 as of September 8, 2026, up 31% in 30 days but down 15.22% since January 1, while XRP trades near $1.40, up 36.77% in 30 days and down 22.74% since January 1.

• XRP has performed better over periods of less than a month, while Ethereum has lost less over periods of more than a year. So, the better choice depends on how long you plan to hold.

• The Senate votes on the CLARITY Act on September 15 and the Fed decides rates on September 16, with Polymarket pricing the bill at 17% and a September hike at 53% to 63%.

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Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) trades around $2,485 as of September 8, 2026, up 31% in 30 days from August 9 to September 8. Meanwhile, XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) trades near $1.40, up roughly 37% over the same 30 days. So which one has more room to run before the Fed decides rates on September 16, and which is more likely to give back its gains?

XRP Leads on the Month and Ethereum on the Year

Over the last thirty-day window from August 9 to September 8, and the year-to-date window from December 31, 2025 to September 8, Ethereum and XRP have performed differently. The table below identifies the leader in each window, showing which coin would have been the better buy around those times.

When we compare both cryptos' performance against other major tokens over the same thirty-day window, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is up about 24%, and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) is up roughly 40%. Over the past 30 days, Solana has been the top performer, with XRP and Ethereum both outperforming Bitcoin but trailing Solana.

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The Senate's Vote and the Fed's Decision are Close

XRP's near-term price looks more exposed than Ethereum's to what happens with the pending crypto market structure bill, the CLARITY Act. The bill would split crypto oversight between the SEC and CFTC and give tokens such as XRP a clearer legal classification. Ethereum, by comparison, has less regulatory uncertainty hanging over it. The SEC never sued over ETH, so Ethereum already has much of the clarity that the bill is intended to establish for other tokens.

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on cloture on September 15. This is a procedural vote to open debate on the bill, not a vote on final passage, and it still requires 60 votes to clear. Polymarket currently puts the chances of the CLARITY Act being signed into law in 2026 at just 17%, down sharply from more than 80% in February. The decline reflects the bill's stalled progress in the Senate, where disagreements over ethics and illicit-finance provisions have continued to delay it.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury company, holds nearly 5.9 million ETH, and its chairman Tom Lee said on the Milk Road Show in late August 2026 that "if it doesn't pass, it's not the worst thing for crypto because the crypto industry has already shown it innovates in the absence of regulatory clarity. So I think Ethereum is going to do fine either way, but I think you're really going to supercharge the movement if the CLARITY Act passes." While Lee has an obvious stake in Ethereum's success, given his role at Bitmine, his comments highlight just how important the legislation could be for ETH.

With both XRP and Ethereum exposed to the same macro forces, the Fed meeting is a risk factor for both, although it does not necessarily tell us which coin will outperform the other. The Fed's upper bound has held at 3.75% since December 2025, while Polymarket put the odds of a September hike at 53% to 63% as of September 8.

The 10-year Treasury yield also hit 4.81% on September 2, its highest level since November 2023. When investors can earn nearly 5% from government bonds, some may have less incentive to hold assets like XRP and ETH that generate no yield, putting pressure on both.

Which Is the Better Buy Before the Fed Meets?

The better buy depends largely on how long you plan to hold. If you're looking for momentum over the past month, XRP has the edge, up 36.77% as against Ethereum's 31.32%, with the pending CLARITY Act legislation acting as a near-term catalyst that could push XRP higher. But if you're more concerned with how each coin has held up over a longer period, Ethereum looks stronger, down 15.22% year to date and 41.58% over the past 12 months, compared with XRP's declines of 22.74% and 50.61%.

To hold their respective advantages, XRP needs to maintain its monthly lead through the September 15 vote, while Ethereum needs to preserve its smaller annual decline if the Fed hikes rates in its September meeting and the 10-year Treasury yield moves above 4.82%. Both coins also need to reclaim their January 1 levels—$2,967 for Ethereum and $1.84 for XRP—to show that the recent rally is more than a short-term bounce.

If XRP and Ethereum fail to recover those levels by the Fed's next meeting in October, the recent 30-day surge may prove to have been more of a bounce than the start of an extended rally.

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