Crypto traders are used to seeing a price surge in non-serious cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin (DOGE) as a sign of market froth. Now it looks as though XRP, the payments-focused cryptocurrency, can also be used as an indicator for bull-market peaks in bitcoin (BTC).

Unlike meme tokens like DOGE and shiba inu (SHIB), XRP has utility. It is used by Ripple to facilitate cross-border transactions, which places it in a bucket different from the memecoins.

Even so, since 2017, XRP has been a contrary indicator for bitcoin bulls, tending to rally— often soaring several hundred percent in a short time — in the final stages of BTC bull runs, marking the point at which bitcoin ultimately peaked.

XRP experienced a remarkable 10-fold rally from December 2017 to early 2018, coinciding with bitcoin's peak at around $20,000, before entering a bear market that lasted almost a year.

A similar near-vertical spike in XRP occurred in early 2021, marking the peak of another bull market in bitcoin. And XRP's surge of approximately 240% in late 2024 foreshadowed bitcoin's bull market peak above $109,000, followed by a decline below $80,000.

As the saying goes: "Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a trend."

The next time BTC is running hot, savvy traders may want to keep an eye on XRP for potential signals regarding the end of the bull run.