Classroom

Everything the simulator references in one place: the strategies it can render, the scenarios that drive their math, how the engine ticks, every term defined, and what this app is (and isn't) for. The side-nav jumps to any section.

Further Reading

Why emphasize yield? Because it lets you skip timing the market.

The hardest game in investing is timing the market — trying to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It wears many costumes: day trading in and out of positions to catch every swing, or using leverage (borrowed money) to magnify a bet you then have to get exactly right. Almost no one wins that game consistently, and chasing it costs most people both money and sleep. Yield offers a calmer path: you do your homework, form a genuine conviction about an asset you believe will win over the long run, and then you simply hold it and let it pay you. You stop trying to outguess the market and start getting paid to be patient.

The income rises and falls — some stretches the yield runs hot, others it cools — but you're no longer hunting for tops and bottoms. And over long horizons, sound assets have tended to grind up and to the right against fiat currencies, which quietly lose purchasing power to inflation year after year. With enough starting capital and a sensible standard of living, that steady passive income can meaningfully subsidize — or, in time, replace — a 9-to-5, and you get to live the life you want without being glued to a price chart. Yield turns a timing problem into a patience problem.

There's a quieter advantage hiding in this. The money you actually live on is the yield — a steady stream you're paid simply for holding — so it's taxed as ordinary income, like a paycheck, rather than as capital gains. Capital-gains tax only comes due when you sell, and here you never sell: your principal, the stack you started with, stays put and keeps appreciating in the background, year after year. (It's exactly why this simulator puts an income-tax drag on yield but never a capital-gains tax — you're being paid, not selling.) That's the part most people miss. "Never sell" does not mean "never profit." You harvest the income the asset throws off while the asset itself keeps growing underneath you — like living off the fruit of a tree you never have to cut down.

The conviction this rests on — XRP as the asset worth holding, deterministic computation as the lab for testing it — is argued in full in this app's creator's published thesis:

XRP: The Best Chance at Life-Changing Wealth in 2026
David Butler, 2026
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20241823
The intellectual framework YieldSim implements.

The one question

The one question: is the upside worth the risk?

Everything this simulator shows you serves a single decision: is the upside worth the risk? It's worth seeing why that one question is the whole game.

Picture the two extremes. If nothing carried any risk, you'd always pick whatever has the highest upside — there'd be no reason not to. If nothing offered any upside, you'd always pick whatever is safest — again, no real decision. Choosing a strategy is only interesting because both matter at once: more upside almost always comes with more risk, and the entire skill is judging how much risk you're accepting for the upside you're chasing. That's why the dashboard puts your Return right next to your Risk — so every row reads as a trade.

Risk reaches you through three different lenses. They're not three names for the same thing — each looks at a different layer. Keeping them straight is half the battle:

1 · The world

The scenario's two badges — frequency × severity. How often a market like this is documented to happen, and how bad it gets when it does. It's the weather you're testing every strategy against, so it's the same for every row in a run.

2 · The strategy

Each strategy's four risk badges — price, counterparty, smart-contract, liquidity. What kinds of risk that particular vehicle structurally carries, whatever the weather. This is what makes one strategy riskier than another.

3 · Your inputs

The impact markers next to each assumption. How much a number you're unsure about would move your answer. This one is about sensitivity, not danger — a high-impact input makes a good guess pay off more and a bad guess hurt more, so it cuts both ways.

Read together, the three answer the one question from three angles: what world am I betting on, what does this strategy expose me to, and which of my guesses matter most? The rest of the Classroom drills into each lens — Scenarios for the worlds, Strategies for the vehicles — and the impact markers live on the Assumptions page.

Strategies

Unallocated XRP

XRP-denominated

XRP exposed to price but not in any yield strategy — the no-yield baseline against which every yield strategy's contribution is measured.

This is the portion of your XRP that isn't deployed into any yield strategy. You're holding it directly (self-custody, an exchange account, wherever) — exposed to XRP's price moves but earning zero yield on top. The chart line is just your XRP balance multiplied by the scenario's price path; every percent XRP moves, this line moves one-for-one.

Two reasons it earns its place on the chart. First, it's a real allocation choice: some XRP belongs outside any yield protocol — for sovereign custody, to avoid counterparty or smart-contract risk, or simply because you haven't decided where to put it yet. Second, it's the no-yield baseline. Every XRP-denominated yield strategy (XLS-66d brokers, AMM LP, Flare-Firelight, earnXRP) is "unallocated XRP plus some flavour of yield, minus some flavour of risk." The vertical gap between this line and any yield strategy's line at any month is exactly the yield contribution at that month — what the user is being paid to take on whatever risk that strategy carries.

In the Custom Portfolio sidebar, allocating a percentage to this leg means "this much of my capital stays as XRP outside any yield strategy." The remaining percentages allocate to the strategies that DO earn yield.

Note: This line shows your XRP's value on paper, not what you'd have after selling. YieldSim doesn't model selling — so no capital-gains tax is taken out of this line, even when XRP has appreciated. See the Classroom Methodology section "Reading the chart" for the full reasoning.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: None Contract: None Liquidity: None
Unallocated XRP has no tunable parameters — the chart line is just your XRP balance times the scenario's price path. Everything that drives the outcome lives in the chosen scenario (and the XRP appreciation knob that shapes it), not in any assumption you'd edit here.

HYSA

USD-denominated

Park USD in a high-yield savings account at a fixed APR. FDIC-insured, no crypto exposure.

Deposit your USD into a high-yield savings account at an online bank. The bank pays you a stated APR, compounded monthly, and the principal is FDIC-insured up to the current legal limit (the simulator doesn't model the above-limit case — the default $10,000 capital sits comfortably below it).

HYSA is the boring baseline. It carries essentially no risk (the FDIC has made every insured depositor whole on every bank failure since 1933) and it earns the lowest yield in the simulator's library. That makes its line on the chart the floor — if a crypto strategy can't beat HYSA across the scenarios you find plausible, then it's not paying you enough to take on the crypto-specific risks (smart-contract, custody, counterparty, price) that it carries. That's the comparison HYSA exists for here.

Risk profile

Price: None Counterparty: Low Contract: None Liquidity: Low

Tunable assumptions (1)

  • HYSA APR · default 4.5% APR (monthly compounding)

USDC DeFi Lending

USD-denominated

Supply USDC into a major DeFi lending venue (Aave / Compound) at a quoted supply APR. USD-denominated, with smart-contract risk modelled as scenario events.

First, the pieces. USDC is a 'stablecoin' — a digital dollar meant to always be worth $1. 'DeFi' (decentralized finance) means lending run by open software on a blockchain instead of by a bank. You buy USDC and 'supply' it (deposit it) into a big, established lending app like Aave or Compound. The software automatically lends it to borrowers who must lock up MORE value than they borrow — that's 'over-collateralised', the safeguard that protects lenders if a borrower walks away. You earn the quoted supply rate (APR), compounded monthly, paid out of the interest those borrowers owe.

Unlike a bank savings account, this has no FDIC insurance and reacts to two crypto-specific dangers. A smart-contract exploit — an attacker draining the lending app — is modelled as a sudden, permanent loss of a chunk of your balance. A USDC 'depeg' — the coin slipping below $1 for a while — is modelled as a temporary markdown that snaps back when the price recovers (and your USDC keeps earning interest the whole time). The default rate sits well above a savings account to pay you for those extra risks; whether that's a fair trade depends on which scenarios you find likely.

Risk profile

Price: None Counterparty: Low Contract: Medium Liquidity: Low

Tunable assumptions (1)

  • USDC DeFi Supply APR · default 6.0% APR (monthly compounding)

XRP/RLUSD AMM LP

XRP-denominated

Provide liquidity to an XRP/RLUSD trading pool. Earns a share of swap fees and pays impermanent loss when XRP price moves. You can switch the pool's pricing rule between full-range Constant Product and Concentrated Liquidity on the Assumptions page.

Deposit XRP and RLUSD (XRPL's USD-pegged stablecoin) into an automated market maker (AMM) pool. Traders pay a small fee on every swap through the pool, and your share of those fees accrues to your position month by month. In exchange you accept impermanent loss: when XRP's price moves away from where you deposited, the pool's continuous rebalancing leaves your position worth a bit less than if you'd just held the two tokens directly. Fee revenue is what compensates you for that drag — compare this strategy against Unallocated XRP under different scenarios to see whether the fees outrun the drag.

You can choose between two pricing rules for the pool on the Assumptions page. Constant Product is the default — a full-range pool where the same dollar of liquidity is spread across every possible price. Concentrated Liquidity lets you pick a tight price band around the deployment price: inside the band, your fees are amplified (roughly 5× more at a ±20% band, roughly 10× more at a ±10% band), but impermanent loss inside the band is amplified by the same factor, and the moment XRP exits your band you stop earning fees until price comes back. That trade-off — bigger fee revenue when you're right about the range, zero fees and an unbalanced position when you're not — is the canonical AMM puzzle, made tunable here.

Try the default first; then switch the curve type and re-run. The Slow Bull and Crypto Winter scenarios are the clearest places to see what happens when price drifts past a Concentrated Liquidity range edge.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: None Contract: Medium Liquidity: Medium

Tunable assumptions (8)

  • AMM LP Entry Half-Buy Slippage (bps) · default 25 bps (0.25%)
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Concentrated-Liquidity Range (± half-width) · default ±20% (range from 80% to 120% of deployment price; fees amplified ≈5.5×)
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Curve Type · default 0 — Constant Product (full-range, today's XRPL AMM default)
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Daily Volume (USD) · default $1,000,000 / day
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Fee Tier · default 0.30% per swap
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Pool Share · default 0.01% of pool
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM Quoted APR · default 0.18% APR (placeholder until first telemetry snapshot)
  • XRP/RLUSD AMM TVL (USD) · default $5,000,000 (placeholder until first telemetry snapshot)

Tokenized T-bills

USD-denominated

Hold a tokenized U.S. T-bill wrapper. USD-denominated, monthly-compounding treasury yield. Wrapper bankruptcy is the only failure mode (high recovery).

A 'T-bill' (Treasury bill) is a short-term loan to the U.S. government. Here you hold tokens issued by a company (the 'wrapper') that buys those real T-bills and keeps them in accounts set aside for its customers. It passes the interest through to you (minus a small fee), so your dollars grow at roughly the short-term government rate, compounded monthly.

This is the 'traditional finance, on a blockchain' comparison line. The thing backing your token is U.S. government debt — about the closest thing to risk-free that exists for dollar returns. The only failure the simulator models is the wrapper company itself going bankrupt, and even then recovery is high (around 90%), because the T-bills it holds are legally the customers' — much like how stock-brokerage customers are protected when a broker collapses. Compare it against HYSA: the two rates are usually similar (government rates set the floor for savings rates), but the failure modes differ — a failed bank is made whole by FDIC insurance, while a failed T-bill wrapper is sorted out in bankruptcy court.

Risk profile

Price: None Counterparty: Low Contract: None Liquidity: Low

Tunable assumptions (2)

  • Tokenized T-bills APR · default 4.5% APR (monthly compounding)
  • Tokenized T-bills LGD · default 10% (90% recovery)

Flare FXRP + Firelight stXRP

XRP-denominated

Move XRP onto the Flare network and stake it into Firelight for XRP-paid yield. Adds two ways to lose at once: the bridge and the staking contract.

This strategy earns yield by moving your XRP onto a different blockchain, called Flare, and putting it to work there — two steps, each adding a layer of risk. Step 1: 'bridge' your XRP to Flare, which means locking up your real XRP and getting a matching stand-in token called FXRP on the Flare side. Step 2: 'stake' that FXRP into a service called Firelight (staking = committing tokens to help run a network in return for rewards), which hands you a yield-bearing token called stXRP. The reward is paid in XRP terms. The bridge step itself pays nothing — it's just the toll you cross to reach the yield.

This is the first strategy in the library exposed to TWO separate ways things can break at once. A hack of the Flare bridge would cut your position even if Firelight is perfectly healthy; a bug or exploit in Firelight would cut it even if the bridge is fine; and if both happen in the same month, the losses stack on top of each other. Bridges in particular have the worst track record in crypto — several have been drained to nothing (Ronin, Wormhole, Nomad). The overall yield lands roughly in line with a cautious XLS-66d broker, so the real question is which risk you'd rather hold: this strategy's bridge-and-contract risk, or the broker's counterparty risk.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: Low Contract: High Liquidity: Medium

Tunable assumptions (2)

  • Bridge Fee (bps) · default 10 bps (0.10%)
  • Flare FXRP + Firelight stXRP APR · default 7.5% APR (XRP-basis, monthly compounding)

earnXRP

XRP-denominated

An XRP yield product that won't reveal what it does with your money. The chart shows its advertised yield minus a 'risk-premium' discount for those hidden risks.

earnXRP stands in for an 'opaque' XRP yield product — one that promises a return but won't show you what it actually does with your money. You deposit XRP, the product does something behind the scenes (some mix of lending, staking, providing liquidity, or bridging — you don't get to know which), and it advertises a headline yield. Your chart line is NOT that headline number; it's the headline minus a 'risk-premium drag', a yearly estimate of all the hidden risks bundled together.

It's the deliberate opposite of the Custom Portfolio strategy. Both spread your money across several yield sources, but Custom Portfolio is see-through (you choose every piece) while earnXRP is a black box (you take the marketing claim on faith and have to discount it yourself for what you can't see). The default drag — 4% off a 10% claim, leaving 6% — is set so the realistic yield lands between a cautious XLS-66d broker (around 7.5%) and a savings account (around 4.5%): a fair guess at what a hidden, layered wrapper is really worth once you account for the risks it won't disclose.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: High Contract: Medium Liquidity: Medium

Tunable assumptions (2)

  • earnXRP Claimed APR · default 10% APR (claimed)
  • earnXRP Risk-Premium Drag · default 4% APR drag (→ 6% effective)

Custom Portfolio

Hybrid

Build your own blend across the standalone strategies. The see-through opposite of earnXRP — you pick, see, and can tweak every piece.

Build your own blend. The dashboard's left sidebar lets you give each of the 10 standalone strategies a whole-number percentage; the Custom Portfolio line on the chart is simply the weighted sum of those pieces (called 'legs'). The percentages must add up to exactly 100% — otherwise it wouldn't be clear where the rest of your money went — so the running total in the sidebar turns yellow whenever you drift off 100%, and submitting a total that doesn't add up shows a friendly error instead of charting broken numbers.

Custom Portfolio is the see-through opposite of earnXRP. Both give you one diversified line, but here you choose and can adjust every leg, whereas earnXRP's mix is a black box. The starting allocation you see on first load — 25% Unallocated XRP, 25% HYSA, 25% USDC, 25% XLS-66d broker — deliberately spreads across very different kinds of strategy (pure-price XRP, safe dollars, and a counterparty-risk lender) so the blended line shows the benefit of not putting all your eggs in one basket at a glance.

Risk profile

Varies — Custom Portfolio inherits the risk of whichever legs you allocate to. A 100% HYSA blend carries almost no risk; a blend heavy in Flare-Firelight or a custodial Earn product carries high smart-contract or counterparty risk. Check each leg's own card for its profile, then weight accordingly.

Custom Portfolio has no fixed assumptions of its own — its behaviour comes from the per-leg weights you set in the dashboard sidebar, which are run-time inputs rather than persistent assumptions. Adjust the legs on the dashboard to reshape the composite line.

XLS-66d Custom Broker

XRP-denominated

Lend XRP into the XLS-66d vault under a broker you tune yourself. Dial APR, first-loss buffer, and LGD on the Assumptions page to model any point on the conservative→aggressive spectrum.

You deposit XRP into a lending 'vault' run by an XLS-66d broker. The broker lends your XRP out to borrowers; you earn interest (an APR) paid in XRP and compounded monthly; and the broker's own 'first-loss buffer' — a cushion of its money — absorbs losses from any borrower defaults before they can reach you. Three knobs on the Assumptions page set the broker's character: the APR it pays you, how thick that first-loss buffer is (as a percent of your deposit), and the LGD — short for loss-given-default, the fraction of a failed loan you'd lose for good after the borrower's pledged collateral is sold off.

Think of brokers along a cautious-to-aggressive spectrum, and set the knobs to match the one you have in mind: • Cautious broker — pays about 6–9%, keeps a thick 8–15% buffer, and recovers more when loans go bad (40–60% LGD). Lower yield, sturdiest safety net. • Moderate broker — about 9–12% pay, a 4–8% buffer, 50–70% LGD. Middle of the road on every front. • Aggressive broker — pays a tempting 12–20%, but on a thin 1–4% buffer with weak recovery (60–85% LGD). Highest yield, and by far the worst hit when a default lands.

Because you're holding XRP, this line also rides XRP's price up and down — so it carries BOTH price risk and the broker's counterparty risk (the chance the broker itself fails or commits fraud, as Celsius, Voyager, and BlockFi did). When a scenario includes a broker-default event, it shaves this line according to the buffer and LGD you've set.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: High Contract: None Liquidity: Medium

Tunable assumptions (3)

  • XLS-66d Broker APR · default 10% APR (XRP-basis, monthly compounding) — Moderate-archetype midpoint
  • XLS-66d Broker First-Loss Buffer · default 8% of deployed capital — Moderate-archetype midpoint
  • XLS-66d Broker LGD · default 55% (45% recovery) — Moderate-archetype midpoint

CEX Earn

XRP-denominated

Hold XRP in a centralized exchange's 'Earn' product for an XRP-paid yield. The big risk is the exchange itself going bankrupt — modelled as recovering only part of your money.

A 'centralized exchange' (CEX) is a company — Binance, Kraken, Coinbase, Bitrue, and the like — where you buy and hold crypto in an account it controls. Its 'Earn' product pays you a yearly rate (APR) for letting it put your XRP to work through its own lending and trading desks. Rates typically run 1.5–8%, depending on whether you can withdraw anytime or have to lock the XRP up for a fixed term, plus the occasional promotion.

The lesson this strategy teaches — the thing that sets it apart from every other XRP-yield line — is what happens if the exchange goes bankrupt: Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, FTX all did. Your XRP isn't set aside in an account that's legally yours; it's mixed into the company's own books. When the exchange fails, you become just another creditor waiting in line in bankruptcy court, and history shows you'd recover only about 30–60%. You can set the LGD (loss-given-default — the fraction you'd lose for good) to model a Celsius-shaped failure (about 50% recovered), a Voyager-shaped one (about 35%), or an FTX-shaped one (about 70%, helped by the later crypto rebound). Compare it against the XLS-66d broker line — which lives on-chain and comes with a first-loss cushion the broker puts up — to feel the real cost of handing your keys to a company.

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: High Contract: None Liquidity: Low

Tunable assumptions (2)

  • CEX Earn APR · default 5% APR (XRP-basis, monthly compounding)
  • CEX Earn LGD · default 65% (35% recovery — Celsius / Voyager midpoint)

XRPL Auto-Yield

XRP-denominated

A product that auto-splits your XRP between liquidity pools and institutional loans. It markets eye-popping yields (88%!) built on token giveaways and cherry-picked peaks; the chart shows the realistic rate left after discounting eight hidden risks (about 10%).

How it works. XRPL Auto-Yield is a single piece of software (a 'router') that takes your XRP and automatically splits it between two money-making sources: liquidity pools (which earn trading fees but suffer 'impermanent loss' when XRP's price moves — see the Glossary) and loans to large, supposedly-vetted institutions (which earn interest but can default). The router shuffles the mix for you; you just see one yield number on your dashboard.

Where the 88% headline comes from. Honest versions of these activities don't pay anywhere near 88%: real liquidity pools make about 5–15%, real institutional lending about 4–8%, and even a perfect blend tops out near 12%. The advertised 88% is manufactured by stacking three tricks. First, most of it is paid in the protocol's OWN freshly-printed token rather than in real XRP — so you might earn ~8% that's real and ~80% in tokens that usually lose 80–95% of their value within a year. Second, cherry-picking: a sky-high return seen during a brief trading frenzy gets advertised as if it lasted all year. Third, charging you almost nothing during the launch promo, then quietly raising the protocol's cut to 30–40% later, once enough money is locked in.

Why the discount is so big. Bundling two sources through a router doesn't reduce your risk — it PILES it up, because your one deposit is now exposed to every way each underlying piece can fail, plus the router itself. Eight separate dangers: (1) a bug or hack in the router software; (2) impermanent loss in the pools; (3) a 'vetted' institutional borrower defaulting anyway (the hedge fund 3AC looked rock-solid right up until it collapsed in 2022); (4) a failure in one underlying pool cascading into the rest; (5) the token most of your 'yield' is paid in collapsing; (6) the router quietly steering your money into the least healthy pool because it has the most room; (7) a 30–90 day withdrawal queue that traps you when things go wrong; and (8) the protocol's fee being raised later by a vote the founding team controls.

How to use the knobs. The default — an 88% claim with a 78% discount — leaves a realistic 10% effective yield, in the same ballpark as a moderate XLS-66d broker. Want to see what the marketing number alone would draw? Dial the discount DOWN (say to 4%) and watch the line shoot off the top of the chart. Want a more cautious view? Dial it UP. Some scenarios also include an event where the auto-routing software itself fails, which takes an extra bite out of this line on top of the everyday discount. Compare it with earnXRP (the same kind of black box, but without those one-off failure events), and with the XLS-66d broker (a similar realistic yield reached honestly, through plain on-chain lending).

Risk profile

Price: High Counterparty: Medium Contract: Medium Liquidity: Low

Tunable assumptions (2)

  • XRPL Auto-Yield Claimed APR · default 88% APR (claimed — matches the 2026 launch promo)
  • XRPL Auto-Yield Risk-Premium Drag · default 78% APR drag (→ 10% effective at default 88% claimed)

Scenarios

How to read these badges

Every scenario below carries two badges — a frequency badge (how often a path shape like it shows up in real crypto history) and a severity badge (how badly the worst-exposed strategy can be damaged at horizon). Splitting the two axes lets each scenario tell the truth about both questions independently — click any badge for the full explainer.

Frequency — how often:

Routine Episodic Rare

Severity — how bad:

Mild Significant Catastrophic

Holding Pattern Routine Mild

$2.50 → $2.50 · 60 months

The baseline scenario: XRP price sits flat at $2.50 for the entire horizon — no rallies, no drawdowns, no events. The chart isolates each strategy's yield contribution from any price-driven gain or loss.

This is the cleanest learning view: Unallocated XRP is a flat zero-return line, USD- and XRP-denominated yield strategies separate purely by their APR, and any divergence between two strategies comes from their yields or from any stress events alone. The flat path is the honest baseline; the volatility-overlay scenarios (Choppy Sideways, Whipsaw) let you see what changes when price actually moves around.

Price path: Flat at $2.50 for the full 60-month horizon.

Slow Bull Routine Mild

$2.50 → $5.00 · 60 months

A measured uptrend: XRP ramps linearly from $2.50 to $5.00 over the first 24 months, then sustains at $5.00 through the rest of the horizon. No events, no drawdowns — just a 2× appreciation playing out at the speed of a typical bull cycle.

Pedagogically, Slow Bull rewards XRP-denominated strategies in two compounding ways: the underlying XRP balance is worth more, AND XRP-basis yield strategies keep accruing in XRP during the appreciation. USD-denominated strategies (HYSA, USDC DeFi, T-bills) miss the price move entirely, so they fall behind the XRP-denominated lines even at higher APRs. The Slow Bull line is the simplest demonstration of 'price exposure dominates yield' for any horizon long enough to capture a cycle.

Price path: Ramps from $2.50 at month 0 to $5.00 by month 60.

Crypto Winter Routine Significant

$2.50 → $0.80 · 60 months

An extended drawdown: XRP slides linearly from $2.50 to $0.80 over the first 18 months (a 68% drop), then sits at $0.80 for the rest of the horizon. No events — the price decline alone does the damage.

Crypto Winter is the symmetric counterpart to Slow Bull, and it punishes XRP exposure without forgiveness. Unallocated XRP loses roughly 68% of its USD value at the trough and never recovers in this scenario; XRP-denominated yield strategies cushion the loss only as much as their yield can cover (a 7.5% APR doesn't outrun a 68% drawdown). USD-denominated strategies — HYSA, USDC DeFi, T-bills — are the only positive lines on the chart. The scenario teaches that 'XRP yield' is XRP risk first and yield second.

Price path: Ramps from $2.50 at month 0 to $0.80 by month 60.

Parabolic Bull Episodic Mild

$2.50 → $8.00 · 60 months

A 'blow-off top' — the classic mania-then-hangover shape. XRP rockets from $2.50 to $15.00 in just 6 months (a 6× spike), then sags from $15.00 down to $8.00 over the next 6 (the comedown), and holds at $8.00 after that. No events; the dramatic shape does all the teaching on its own.

It shows what each strategy gives up — or doesn't. Simply holding XRP rides the whole spike, hands back about 47% from the peak, and still finishes roughly 3× up. The dollar strategies (savings, USDC, T-bills) miss the move entirely and end barely above where they started. The AMM liquidity strategy is the interesting middle case: 'impermanent loss' (see the Glossary) bites hardest right at the top, because the pool keeps selling your appreciating XRP into the rally — so it lags simple holding at the peak, then wins a little back on the way down. A good reality check for anyone who assumes 'yield' is the whole story.

Price path: Starts at $2.50, peaks at $15.00 around month 6, settles at $8.00.

Winter + Aggressive Default Episodic Significant

$2.50 → $0.80 · 60 months

This takes Crypto Winter's exact price slide (XRP from $2.50 down to $0.80 over 18 months) and adds one piece of bad news: at month 12, borrowers in the XLS-66d broker's loan book fail to repay 8% of it. It's the most common 'bad broker' shape — a credit shock landing right in the middle of a falling market, when the broker can least afford it.

Whether that 8% actually hurts you depends entirely on how you've set the broker up. If you've dialled an aggressive profile — a thin first-loss buffer, say 2.5% (that's the broker's own cushion of money that takes losses first) — it can't absorb an 8% hit, so the leftover loss falls straight through to your position. A cautious profile with a thick 12% buffer would have swallowed the whole thing. The 8% is sized to feel like 'a rough quarter', not a total collapse (that's the Celsius Redux scenario). Watch how the broker's cushion soaks up part of the blow and the rest lands on you — the exact lopsided drawdown a thin-cushion setup invites.

Price path: Ramps from $2.50 at month 0 to $0.80 by month 60.

Stress events (1)

  • month 12 Broker default: 8% magnitude against XLS66D_CUSTOM (consumed through the broker's first-loss buffer and LGD).

Bridge Exploit (Flare) Rare Catastrophic

$2.50 → $2.50 · 60 months

Holding Pattern's flat $2.50 price, plus one disaster: at month 6, a bridge holding your wrapped XRP (the Flare FXRP bridge) is hacked and drained to zero. The flat price backdrop is on purpose — with no market noise to distract, the chart tells the story of the event alone.

The Flare FXRP + Firelight strategy is the only one that depends on that bridge, and this scenario wipes its line out completely. It pairs nicely with 'Winter + Aggressive Default': both show an XRP-yield strategy failing, but in opposite ways. A broker default is partly recoverable — the broker's cushion plus the recovery on the bad loans soften it. A bridge hack is instant and total, with nothing to recover. Once the bridge is broken, no XRP escapes — even though the Firelight staking sits right on top of it.

Price path: Flat at $2.50 for the full 60-month horizon.

Stress events (1)

  • month 6 Smart-contract exploit: 100% haircut to positions in FLARE_BRIDGE (immediate-and-final; no recovery).

USDC Depeg Episodic Mild

$2.50 → $2.50 · 60 months

Holding Pattern's flat $2.50 price, plus one event: at month 18 the USDC stablecoin slips to $0.92 for a single month, then climbs back to its $1 peg. It mirrors the real March-2023 USDC wobble (the dip's depth and length are taken from that episode), and it's the simulator's one example of a dip-then-recover event.

Unlike a hack or a broker default, which take a permanent bite out of your position, a depeg only marks down the DISPLAYED dollar value for a while — the number of USDC coins you hold doesn't change. Your USDC keeps earning interest right through the dip, and when the price returns to $1 your displayed value snaps back up with it. On the chart you'll see USDC DeFi Lending dip at month 18 and bounce back at month 19 — a temporary scare, not a permanent loss. The lesson: a stablecoin briefly slipping off its peg is real but usually short-lived; the bigger, lasting danger is the software holding your coins being hacked, not the peg itself.

Price path: Flat at $2.50 for the full 60-month horizon.

Stress events (1)

  • month 18 Stablecoin depeg: USDC marks to $0.92 for 1 month(s), then recovers to face value (face balance keeps earning APR through the window).

Black Swan: Celsius Redux Rare Catastrophic

$2.50 → $0.80 · 60 months

The library's most extreme scenario. It takes Crypto Winter's price slide (XRP $2.50 → $0.80 over 18 months) and adds one catastrophic event: at month 12, the XLS-66d broker's loan book suffers a 100% default — total fraud. The broker's first-loss cushion is beside the point here, because the loss is many times larger than any cushion.

It's modelled on the Celsius collapse of June 2022: a flashy high-yield lender failing fraudulently in the middle of a market downturn. Once the cushion is used up, the broker's loss-given-default (around 72.5% in an aggressive setup — the share of the loss you simply don't get back) applies to what's left, leaving you down roughly 70%. Crucially, this hits ONLY the broker you lent to — every other strategy on the chart is untouched, which is the whole lesson: spreading your money across different places limits how much any single blow-up can take from you. Scenarios like this are rare, but everyday conversation tends to forget them (the people who got wiped out aren't the ones posting their returns) — and when they do hit, they reorder the entire chart.

Price path: Ramps from $2.50 at month 0 to $0.80 by month 60.

Stress events (1)

  • month 12 Broker default: 100% magnitude against XLS66D_CUSTOM (consumed through the broker's first-loss buffer and LGD).

Choppy Sideways Routine Mild

$2.50 → $2.50 · 60 months

XRP drifts up and down around $2.50, swinging as much as ±25% along the way but always getting pulled back toward the middle — Holding Pattern's flat line with realistic waviness added. The wave is a fixed mathematical shape (a smooth up-and-down cycle about 8 months long), so the scenario replays identically every time you run it.

The question it answers: what does choppiness DO when the price goes nowhere overall? It depends on the strategy. Simply holding XRP wobbles but ends right back at $2.50. Savings and USDC compound calmly through the noise. The AMM liquidity strategy is the interesting one: more price movement means more trading, so it collects more fees — but it also pays more 'impermanent loss' on each swing (see the Glossary). You get to see both effects side by side, with no randomness or guesswork involved.

Price path: Starts at $2.50, peaks at $3.13 around month 2, settles at $2.50.

Whipsaw Episodic Significant

$2.50 → $3.00 · 60 months

A roller-coaster in three parts: XRP climbs from $2.50 to $4.50 in the first 6 months (early excitement), crashes to $1.50 by month 18 (the wipeout), then claws back to $3.00 by month 36 and holds. It's built to show 'sequence-of-returns risk' — the idea that the ORDER in which gains and losses arrive matters, not just where the price ends up. Because you put your money in at the start, you live through the entire crash on the way.

The lesson: even though XRP finished ABOVE where you bought it ($3.00 versus $2.50), you end only modestly ahead, because your position's value tracked the price all the way down through the bottom. XRP-yield strategies soften the plunge only as far as their yield can outpace the falling price. The dollar strategies (savings, USDC, T-bills) draw calm, steadily-rising lines, completely indifferent to the chaos. Whipsaw is the sibling of Slow Bull — the same XRP price at the finish, but a wildly different journey and very different results for you.

Price path: Starts at $2.50, peaks at $4.50 around month 6, settles at $3.00.

Late Pump Episodic Mild

$2.50 → $6.00 · 60 months

Flat at $2.50 for 24 months, then $2.50 → $6.00 over the final 12 months. Tests whether yield strategies that compounded through the long flat period catch the late move, or whether the timing of the move makes them irrelevant. The dashboard answers "when does yield compound enough to matter when the price stays flat for two years?"

Here's the payoff: a strategy that earns its yield IN XRP (like the XLS-66d broker) keeps piling up more XRP all through the long flat stretch. So when the late jump finally arrives, it rides that jump on a bigger pile of XRP than someone who simply held. That's the punchline — under Late Pump, an XRP-yield strategy beats just holding XRP every time, because the holder's pile never grew while the yield-earner's did. The dollar strategies (savings, USDC, T-bills) miss the jump entirely.

Price path: Ramps from $2.50 at month 0 to $6.00 by month 60.

Methodology

How a chart line is computed

Each chart line is computed from three things you choose on the dashboard and the Assumptions page:

  • Your inputs — the dollar amount you're deploying (capital) and how many months to simulate (horizon).
  • The scenario — the XRP/USD price path you picked, plus any stress events scheduled along the way (a broker default, a smart-contract exploit, a stablecoin depeg, etc.).
  • The assumptions — every yield rate, loss-given-default, first-loss buffer size, and tax rate the strategy reads. Defaults are shown on the Assumptions page; you can override any of them for this session.

The math is deterministic — the same three inputs always produce the same chart line, byte-for-byte. No randomness, no time-of-day dependency, no hidden state. Change one assumption and re-run; the only thing that moves on the chart is whatever that assumption directly affects.

For each strategy, the simulator walks forward one month at a time. At every month boundary it updates the position (compounds the yield, applies any event that fired this month, marks the XRP balance to the scenario's price for that month), and records the current USD value. The chart shows that month-by-month USD value as one line per strategy; the summary table takes the first and last months and shows the total return.

Strategies do not know about each other. The Custom Portfolio is the one exception — it runs every leg you've allocated to and then combines them, weighted by the percentages you set in the sidebar. See the Custom Portfolio math section for how the blending works.

Why XRP appreciation is THE knob

The dashboard's XRP price expectation over your horizon input is the single most consequential assumption in the entire simulator. For any strategy that holds XRP — the XLS-66d broker, AMM LP, Flare-Firelight, earnXRP, CEX Earn, XRPL Auto-Yield, and the Unallocated XRP baseline — your eventual USD outcome is a product of two things compounding together: how much your XRP balance grew (from yield) and how much each XRP is worth in USD at horizon end (from price). The price knob picks the second factor. It dwarfs every other knob in the simulator.

How it works: the named scenarios (Slow Bull, Crypto Winter, Parabolic Bull, etc.) describe the SHAPE of the journey — smooth ramp, choppy oscillator, spike-and-settle, multi-segment whipsaw. Your appreciation input sets the destination. Picking "Slow Bull" pre-loads its canonical +100% default (the smooth ramp lands at 2× deployment price by month 24). Override that to +500% and the same smooth ramp now ends at 6× deployment. The scenario's character is preserved; only the magnitude shifts.

The multiplicative-compounding identity:

final USD = starting XRP × (1 + APR ÷ 12 × (1 − tax))^months × price at horizon end

Concrete example. $10,000 deployed at $2.50 = 4,000 XRP. Running the XLS-66d broker set to a cautious profile (7.5% APR, 36-month horizon, 24% federal tax) under Slow Bull:

  • At +0% appreciation (Slow Bull becomes flat): 4,000 × 1.075³ × 0.76^36-ish ≈ 5,019 XRP × $2.50 ≈ $12,549.
  • At +100% appreciation (canonical Slow Bull, $5.00 endpoint): same 5,019 XRP × $5.00 ≈ $25,098.
  • At +1000% appreciation (XRP becomes 11×, $27.50 endpoint): same 5,019 XRP × $27.50 ≈ $138,025.

The XRP balance is identical across all three runs — yield doesn't know what XRP is worth in USD. The USD outcome differs purely by the price ratio. Yield and price multiply, they don't add.

The contrast with USD-denominated strategies. HYSA, USDC DeFi Lending, and Tokenized T-bills compound on a USD balance and never read the XRP price. Move the appreciation knob anywhere from −95% to +5000% and those three chart lines don't budge. That contrast is itself a load-bearing lesson: if you have an opinion about XRP price you want to express, you want an XRP-denominated strategy. If you don't, the USD-denominated strategies don't care.

Why deterministic, not probabilistic

YieldSim is deterministic by design and forever. Given the same inputs the engine produces the same output, every time — no random walks, no Monte Carlo, no fan charts. This is a deliberate architectural choice, not a limitation we'll eventually overcome. The opposite design (a probabilistic forecasting tool) is a different product, one we are not building.

The honest tradeoff:

  • You gain formula transparency and zero false-precision risk. With deterministic math, the chart's answer is exactly what your inputs imply — provably. Change an assumption, watch the chart move, learn what that assumption is worth in the answer.
  • You lose distributional insight. A probabilistic engine would give you "given σ and the GBM you guessed, here's a fan chart of outcomes" — but a fan chart visually communicates calibrated probability when the inputs are still guesses. That's the false-precision trap. The right way to test "what if I'm wrong?" here is to change the assumption directly.

Why we chose against Monte Carlo specifically:

  • "More accurate" is the wrong frame. Both deterministic and Monte Carlo are toy models; neither predicts XRP price. Deterministic says "given this exact path, here's each strategy." MC says "given σ-you-guessed and zero-drift-you-also-guessed, here's a distribution." The latter has fewer visible parameters but more invisible ones.
  • Determinism preserves the slogan: you own the assumptions, we own the formula. With MC, the "formula" includes σ-you-guessed plus the GBM shape assumption itself — the user no longer owns their way to a reproducible answer.
  • The named scenarios (Crypto Winter, Bridge Exploit, Celsius Redux) teach counterfactuals — "if THIS happened, how do strategies fare?" MC teaches distributions, which can't answer "how does Unallocated XRP behave under a 2018-style winter."
  • 11 deterministic lines on one chart is comparable at a glance. 11 fan-chart bands is visual mush.

How to read the chart: each line is a conditional statement — "if these assumptions hold, then this outcome." Not "here's what we think will happen." See the Scenarios section for how the volatility-overlay scenarios let you explore path-dependent strategy behavior without inviting a guess-the-probability trap.

Scenarios

The scenario picker offers a small library of pre-built market shapes — smooth ramp, choppy oscillator, parabolic spike-and-settle, multi-segment whipsaw, late-pump, and so on. Each one is a deterministic month-by-month XRP/USD price path and (optionally) a list of stress events scheduled to fire on specific months. When you pick a scenario, every strategy is re-run against the same path so the lines can be compared like-for-like.

Shape vs magnitude. Each scenario describes the SHAPE of the journey; the XRP appreciation knob sets the destination. Picking Slow Bull pre-loads its canonical +100% default (a smooth ramp to 2× deployment); type +500% into the appreciation input and the same smooth ramp now lands at 6× deployment. The shape is the scenario's character — what happens between deployment and horizon end — and the appreciation magnitude is how far the price actually travels.

The paths are stylised archetypes, not historical replays. Crypto Winter is the shape of a slow-grinding decline; Parabolic Bull is the shape of a spike-and-settle; Whipsaw is the shape of an early rally followed by a deep crash and a partial recovery. None of these claim their specific endpoint magnitude is likely — they're shapes for testing how each strategy behaves if that pattern played out.

Some scenarios add a volatility overlay (Choppy Sideways oscillates around the trend, Whipsaw spikes and crashes and recovers) so you can see how path-dependent strategies — the AMM LP especially — behave differently from strategies that only care about the start and end prices.

Two types of assumptions

Every input the simulator reads is one of two types. The dashboard chrome strip and the Assumptions page are organised around the split because the split itself is pedagogically load-bearing.

  • What you control (Type A). Decisions you'd actually make in real life — capital deployed, time horizon, scenario selection, Custom Portfolio allocation. These live on the dashboard, not on the Assumptions page, because they're inputs you own directly.
  • What the world does (Type B). Things outside your control that the simulator still needs a value for — yield rates, default and recovery profiles, the federal tax rate, transaction costs. Every Type B value carries a default that you can override for this session on the Assumptions page.

The most common personal-finance mental error is treating world assumptions as fixed and own behavior as the only variable, when reality is the reverse. Surfacing both sides structurally — same screen, same chrome — teaches the correct decomposition without a lecture.

How yield compounds

Two strategies that both quote "6% yield" can mean very different things in practice. The simulator is explicit about what each yield rate means and how it's applied so the chart can be trusted. There are two styles in the library.

Monthly compounding from an annual rate

Used by HYSA, USDC DeFi Lending, Tokenized T-bills, the XLS-66d broker, CEX Earn, XRPL Auto-Yield, Flare FXRP + Firelight stXRP, and earnXRP. Each of these strategies quotes its yield as an annual percentage rate (APR). The simulator divides that rate by 12 to get the per-month growth, then applies it at every month boundary: 

balance next month = balance × (1 + APR ÷ 12)

Because the next month's yield is calculated on the new (slightly larger) balance, the effective annual yield (APY) ends up a touch higher than the quoted APR. A 4.5% APR compounded monthly works out to roughly 4.6% APY.

Fee revenue from swap activity (XRP/RLUSD AMM LP)

The AMM LP strategy doesn't earn a quoted APR. It earns a share of the fees that traders pay on every swap through the pool. Each month, the simulator computes the fee revenue your position captured from three things you can tune on the Assumptions page: 

monthly fee revenue = fee tier × daily volume × your pool share × 30 days

Higher swap volume and a higher pool share earn more fees; a wider fee tier earns more per swap. Those fees are added to the pool each month, and the position's value also rides the pool's rebalancing between XRP and RLUSD (the impermanent loss drag). The Concentrated Liquidity curve type amplifies both fees and impermanent loss inside its price band, and earns zero fees when price exits the band.

XRP-basis vs USD-basis yields

Every strategy is either XRP-denominated (yield accrues in XRP on the XRP balance) or USD-denominated (yield accrues in USD on the USD balance). The distinction is consequential: a 10% APR paid in XRP during a bull market grows the USD value much faster than 10% paid in USD, and vice versa during a bear market.

  • XRP-denominated: Unallocated XRP, all XLS-66d brokers, XRP/RLUSD AMM LP, Flare-Firelight, earnXRP, and Custom Portfolio when its allocation tilts toward XRP. The position's USD value at month t is the strategy's XRP balance times xrp_usd_price(t).
  • USD-denominated: HYSA, USDC DeFi Lending, Tokenized T-bills. The position ignores the scenario's XRP price path; its USD value is just the compounding USD balance.

This is why a USDC-only line on the chart is flat across all 8 scenarios (its growth is identical regardless of XRP price) but an Unallocated XRP line is dramatically different under each — and why the scenarios page emphasises "which strategies it stresses" rather than just "what the price does."

Event reaction patterns

Stress events (broker defaults, smart-contract exploits, stablecoin depegs, issuer defaults) live on the scenario, not on the strategy. Each strategy ignores events it doesn't recognise; the ones it does recognise apply one of three patterns:

Accrue-then-haircut

Used by USDC DeFi Lending (smart-contract exploit), T-bills (issuer default), XLS-66d brokers (broker default after buffer / LGD chain), and Flare-Firelight (bridge or contract exploit). At the event's month boundary, the strategy first accrues the month's normal yield, then applies the event haircut to the resulting balance. Order matters: accruing after the haircut would over-state the position for the month the event fired in.

First-loss-buffer absorption (XLS-66d brokers only)

The broker posts a first-loss capital tranche sized as a fraction of the lender's initial deployment. When a default event fires, the gross exposure equals magnitude × current_xrp_balance; the LGD chain converts that to magnitude × LGD × current_xrp_balance as net loss; the buffer absorbs as much of the net loss as it still has left, and any residual falls through to the lender's position. The buffer is a one-shot resource — once drained, subsequent defaults hit the position directly.

Face-value tracking with displayed markdown (stablecoin depeg)

Used by USDC DeFi Lending for the USDC depeg event flavour. The strategy tracks an internal face value separately from the displayed USD: face value compounds at the supply APR every month regardless of depeg state and is only ever reduced by permanent events (exploits). During the depeg window, the displayed USD is face_value × floor_price; after the window, the displayed USD snaps back to face_value × 1.0. Net effect: a depeg shows up as a temporary V-shaped dip on the chart, not a permanent step down.

Why distinct event flavours rather than one polymorphic event with a haircut field: the recovery semantics differ structurally. Smart-contract exploits are immediate-and-final; broker defaults are partial-recoverable through the LGD chain and the first-loss buffer; depegs are temporary markdowns with full recovery. Collapsing all three into a "haircut percentage" event would force the consuming strategy to know which flavour produced any given haircut number — defeating the typed-event hierarchy.

Custom Portfolio math

Custom Portfolio is the only strategy that's a blend of others. The simulator runs every leg you've allocated to as if it were standalone, then combines the lines using your sidebar percentages: 

portfolio value each month = sum of (weight × that leg's value)

Your allocation weights live on the dashboard sidebar and must sum to exactly 100%. A leg with 0% allocation is skipped entirely — costs nothing, changes nothing.

Importantly, stress events apply inside each leg. A USDC depeg only affects the USDC Lending slice; an XLS-66d broker default only affects the XLS-66d slice; the HYSA leg sails through both unchanged. The chart line for Custom Portfolio is what your blended position would actually have been worth each month, with each leg correctly absorbing the events it cares about.

Precision and reproducibility

The simulator uses high-precision decimal arithmetic for everything that's money-shaped — yield rates, balances, defaults, taxes. That's the natural way to handle dollars and cents and avoids the tiny rounding glitches that ordinary floating-point would introduce on values like 4.5% APR or $10,000.00.

Two people running the same scenario with the same assumption values will see the exact same chart lines, down to the penny. There is no random seed, no time-of-day input, no learning algorithm, and no shared state between users. Your session only remembers what you typed (capital, horizon, scenario choice, allocation weights, any assumption overrides) — those stay private to your browser tab and disappear when you close it.

If you change one assumption and re-run, the only thing that moves on the chart is whatever that assumption directly drives. That's the whole point of being deterministic: the cause-and-effect stays visible. You own the assumptions. The simulator owns the formula.

Custom scenarios — what authoring one teaches

The dashboard ships with named scenarios (Holding Pattern, Slow Bull, Crypto Winter, etc.) that cover the canonical price-path archetypes most users want to test against. The Custom Scenario Builder lets you author your own price path and event timeline in-session — your own 24-month draw of where XRP might go and what might happen along the way.

Why this exists as pedagogy, not as forecasting. The act of drawing a path forces you to make your priors explicit. "I think XRP grinds sideways for a year then ramps to $5" is a guess most users carry implicitly. Typing it as a 24-row CSV pulls the guess out of your head and into the chart, where you can watch what each strategy would do under it. The simulator never tells you whether the path is likely — that's your judgement to make. What it tells you is the consequence of the path under each strategy's deterministic math.

How event authoring works. You can schedule four kinds of stress events on any month of your custom path: a broker default (hits the XLS-66d broker), a smart-contract exploit (drains a protocol — Flare bridge, Firelight, a DeFi lending pool), an issuer default (hits a Tokenized T-bill wrapper), or a stablecoin depeg (the USDC stablecoin slips below its $1 price for a while, then recovers). Each event picks the entity it affects, so a broker default never leaks into HYSA, a depeg never leaks into Unallocated XRP, and so on. The built-in scenarios use the same event types under the hood — the only difference is whether you authored the timeline or the simulator shipped with one.

Session-only, no accounts, no cloud. Your custom scenario lives in this browser tab. Closing the tab loses it; nothing is saved to the cloud, nothing identifies you, and there's no account to create. Re-enter the values any time you want to revisit it.

What the simulator deliberately does not model

Honesty about what's outside the math is as important as the math itself. The simulator does not model:

  • State, local, and international tax. The simulator does model US federal income tax as a drag on every yield-bearing strategy (default 24% — the most common US single-filer bracket; you can change it on the Assumptions page under the Global card). It does not model state, local, or international tax — those vary too much across jurisdictions to assume a useful default. Unallocated XRP shows zero tax in the chart because the simulator doesn't model the sale event that would realise capital gains; AMM impermanent loss is treated as price drift rather than a taxable event for the same reason.
  • Transaction costs. Three optional transaction-cost knobs are available on the Assumptions page (Flare bridge fee, AMM entry slippage, AMM exit slippage). They default to zero so the chart doesn't shift unless you turn them on. Gas fees, broker spreads, and exchange withdrawal fees aren't modelled — they're either trivial on the XRPL-native strategies or too venue-specific to assume a single number for.
  • Within-path volatility. The price paths in the built-in scenarios are stylised shapes, not historical replays. Real markets are messier — fat tails, regime shifts, sudden correlations. Some scenarios (Choppy Sideways, Whipsaw) add a deliberate volatility overlay to test path-dependent strategies; a fan-chart-style probability engine is deliberately not on the roadmap, because guessed-volatility inputs would look more authoritative than they really are.
  • Counterparty contagion. Each event affects only the entity it names. In real markets a single broker default can trigger redemption runs at sister vaults, and a stablecoin depeg can spread to other stablecoins. The simulator's events are clean and isolated so each one teaches a single lesson clearly.
  • You. The simulated position is deployed at month 0 and held until the end of the horizon — no rebalancing, no panic-selling, no dollar-cost averaging back in. Real investors react to what they see; the simulator deliberately doesn't, so the chart line is the strategy's behaviour, not yours.

See the About section disclaimer for the full educational-tool framing.

The Volatility Overlay — historical replay as calibration, not prediction

Smooth scenario paths are honest but unrealistic — XRP doesn't move in a clean ramp. The optional Volatility Overlay lets you layer real historical XRP/USD chop on top of the scenario's smooth path. You pick the window; the engine replays its percent-deviation series. The chart shows what deploying through that kind of chop would have looked like — calibration, not prediction.

The window is your choice. You own the assumption that "this past period is representative of the volatility I want to test against." The engine doesn't fit a statistical distribution and doesn't sample from one — it replays a specific historical series you selected, de-trended against a linear fit so the chart shows chop without baking the window's secular trajectory into the overlay.

This is NOT a forecast. The price moves shown already happened. The pedagogy is "deploying through this kind of chop would have looked like this," not "the future will look like this."

For the full framework underpinning YieldSim's "XRP as the baseline asset" assumption and the historical-overlay approach used here, see this app's creator's published book: XRP: The Best Chance at Life-Changing Wealth in 2026, David Butler, 2026 — DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20241823.

Reading the chart: pre-disposal HODL vs after-tax yield

YieldSim doesn't model selling. Every chart line shows what your position is worth at the chosen horizon — for XRP-denominated lines that's paper USD value at horizon-end price; for USD-denominated lines it's an account balance you could in principle withdraw. Choosing when to sell is timing the market, which YieldSim refuses to answer.

What this means for tax:

  • Yield is taxed in-period at the configured federal marginal rate. Correct because yield is realized as it accrues.
  • HODL XRP appreciation is shown PRE-disposal, i.e. as unrealized gains. No capital-gains drag is applied because no disposal happens.
  • Comparing HODL XRP vs HYSA on the chart: HYSA's line is what the account literally shows after tax. HODL XRP's line is the paper value of the XRP you'd still be holding. They are not literally apples-to-apples — HODL's eventual tax drag depends on when (and whether) you ever sell.

If you want a quick mental adjustment: long-term cap gains in the U.S. federal bracket is typically 15–20%. Mentally multiply HODL's terminal USD by ~0.85 to get a back-of-envelope after-tax disposal value. We don't bake this into the chart because we don't bake in when you'd sell. Turn on "Show liquidation value at horizon" to apply a configurable exit-slippage drag at the final month if you want to model the execution side of disposal.

Glossary

Yield-shape terms

APR (Annual Percentage Rate)

A yield (interest rate) quoted on a yearly basis, before the effect of compounding is added in. A 12% APR means "12% over a year if you just hold the position." Most of the strategies in the simulator (HYSA, USDC DeFi Lending, Tokenized T-bills, the XLS-66d broker, CEX Earn, XRPL Auto-Yield, Flare FXRP + Firelight stXRP, and earnXRP) quote their yield as an APR. The simulator turns that yearly rate into a monthly one by dividing by 12, then applies it at every month boundary so the balance compounds.

APY (Annual Percentage Yield)

The effective annual return after compounding is baked in. A 12% APR compounded monthly works out to roughly 12.68% APY; the same 12% applied once at year-end is 12% APY flat. The Assumptions page lists each rate as an APR for clarity (compounding is the simulator's job, not yours), and the chart shows the compounded result.

Compounding

Reinvesting yield as it accrues so the next period's yield is calculated on a slightly larger balance. The simulator compounds monthly: at each month boundary the balance grows by balance × (1 + monthly rate). For strategies quoted as an APR the monthly rate is APR ÷ 12. The AMM LP strategy is different — its monthly growth comes from swap fees the pool collected, computed from the fee tier, daily volume, and your pool share you set on the Assumptions page. The Methodology section walks through both styles.

Yield vs price exposure

Two independent sources of return on a crypto position. Yield is what the strategy pays you per unit of asset held (the APR or per-month rate). Price exposure is what happens to the USD value of the asset itself as its market price moves. The simulator's pedagogy is that yield strategies dressed as "passive income" often hide significant price exposure — a 7.5% XRP-denominated APR doesn't help if XRP price drops 40%.

Risk-and-recovery terms

Counterparty risk

The risk that the entity holding or borrowing your asset goes away — bankrupt, fraudulent, or simply unable to return the asset on demand. XLS-66d brokers, T-bill wrappers, and earnXRP wrapper companies are all counterparties; Unallocated XRP has none (you hold the keys). HYSA has structurally low counterparty risk because the FDIC backstops insured deposits.

Smart-contract risk

The risk that a smart contract holding your asset is exploited (hostile actor drains funds), bugged (logic error causes loss), or upgraded incorrectly. USDC DeFi Lending and Flare-Firelight stXRP both carry smart-contract risk; the simulator models exploits as one-shot percentage haircuts to your position (see exploit).

LGD (Loss Given Default)

A "default" is when a borrower can't pay back a loan. LGD is the fraction of the money in that loan you lose for good — after everything recoverable has been collected (by selling the borrower's pledged collateral, or through bankruptcy proceedings). An LGD of 50% means you get back 50¢ on the dollar and lose the other 50 on the affected portion; the part you get back is called the "recovery." You set the XLS-66d broker's LGD yourself (the default is a moderate 55%). A tokenized T-bill defaults to a low 10% LGD, because the U.S. government debt behind it is still there to claim if the wrapper company fails. A centralized-exchange Earn product defaults to a high 65%, because exchanges often lend out customer crypto rather than setting it aside.

First-loss capital

A cushion of the broker's OWN money that absorbs losses from borrower defaults before any loss reaches you, the lender. In the XLS-66d strategy the broker posts this buffer sized as a fraction of the capital you deploy — you set how thick it is, with a default of a moderate 8%. It's a one-shot resource: it soaks up the net loss (after LGD is applied) up to its size, and then anything left over falls through to your position. A thicker buffer means the broker has more of its own money on the line — more "skin in the game" — and tends to lend more carefully.

Exploit (smart-contract)

A successful attack on a smart contract (the software that holds your funds) that drains the money out of it. The simulator models this as an immediate, permanent loss of a set percentage of any position sitting in the affected protocol the moment the attack happens. Unlike a broker default, there's no recovery and no first-loss cushion to soften the blow — the contract is emptied or it isn't.

Depeg

A "stablecoin" is a crypto token designed to hold a fixed value — almost always $1. Its "peg" is that target value. A "depeg" is when the token slips meaningfully below it for a while (say, trading at 92¢ instead of $1). The simulator treats this as a temporary markdown: the amount of stablecoin you're owed keeps growing at the lending rate through the slump, but its displayed dollar value drops to match the lower price. When the peg is restored, the value snaps back up. The USDC Depeg scenario models a one-month dip to 92¢, based on the real March-2023 USDC episode.

Protocol-and-venue terms

AMM (Automated Market Maker)

A trading pool where two tokens sit side-by-side and traders swap one for the other against a fixed pricing rule. Liquidity providers deposit both tokens (typically 50/50 by value), earn a small fee on every swap against their share of the pool, and pay impermanent loss when the price ratio between the two tokens moves. The XRP/RLUSD AMM LP strategy is the simulator's AMM example.

Constant-product market maker

The most common AMM design (the Uniswap-V2 style): the product of the two pool reserves stays constant after every trade. This produces a clean relationship between the price ratio and the value of a pool position: as XRP moves away from its deployment price, the pool's automatic rebalancing leaves your position worth a bit less than if you'd just held the two tokens directly. That gap is impermanent loss; the swap fees you earn are what compensate for it. Constant product is the only AMM curve the XRPL's current AMM supports; see Swappable Curves for the proposed amendment that would add other curves.

Concentrated liquidity (CL)

An AMM design (the Uniswap-V3 style) where the liquidity provider picks a tight price band around the current price and only provides liquidity inside that band, instead of spreading across every possible price. Inside the band, the same dollars earn many times more in fees than a full-range position would (roughly 5× more at a ±20% band, roughly 10× more at a ±10% band). Outside the band, the position holds whichever token the price moved past and earns no fees until the price returns. The XRPL's current AMM doesn't support concentrated liquidity natively; the proposed Swappable Curves amendment would add it. The simulator lets you switch the XRP/RLUSD AMM LP strategy to a concentrated-liquidity curve on the Assumptions page via the Curve Type knob.

Swappable Curves (proposed XRPL amendment)

A proposal that would let the creator of an XRPL AMM pool pick which pricing rule ("curve") the pool runs on, rather than being locked into the one default the XRPL AMM uses today. The proposal reserves several curve types: Constant Product (today's default — a full-range pool where the product of the two reserves stays constant); Concentrated Liquidity (the LP picks a tight price band and earns much higher fees inside it, but zero fees when price moves outside); StableSwap (a curve designed for two assets that should stay near the same price, such as two stablecoins); and Weighted (asymmetric pools that hold more of one token than the other). The proposal is still in draft and isn't live on the XRPL yet. The simulator models the two curves that produce a meaningfully different chart line for a volatile pair like XRP/RLUSD — Constant Product and Concentrated Liquidity — and skips the others because they only matter for near-peg pairs (StableSwap) or asymmetric pools (Weighted).

Impermanent loss (IL)

The opportunity cost of providing liquidity to an AMM rather than just holding both tokens. The pool's rebalancing algorithm continuously sells you out of the appreciating token and into the depreciating one, so your position underperforms a static 50/50 hold whenever the price ratio moves in either direction. IL is "impermanent" only in the sense that if the price returns to deployment it disappears — but in practice it crystallises when you withdraw.

TVL (Total Value Locked)

The total dollar value of everything deposited in a DeFi protocol or pool. It's a rough gauge of how widely used a protocol is — and, loosely, how tempting a target it makes for attackers. It's shown for reference in the AMM tooltips, but the simulator doesn't plug it directly into the math.

Bridge (cross-chain)

A protocol that lets an asset native to one blockchain be represented and used on a different blockchain — typically by locking the original on the source chain and minting a wrapped version on the destination. Bridges are a major source of smart-contract risk: a bridge exploit can vaporise every wrapped position depending on it. The Flare bridge that mints FXRP is the simulator's canonical bridge example; the "Bridge Exploit (Flare)" scenario tests this failure mode.

XRPL-specific terms

XRPL (XRP Ledger)

The blockchain XRP runs on. Native lending vaults, the XRP/RLUSD AMM, and most XRP- denominated yield products in the simulator are XRPL-native; Flare-Firelight is the one exception (XRP bridges off XRPL into Flare and is staked there).

XLS-66d

A proposed upgrade to the XRP Ledger (an "amendment") that would add built-in lending pools run by approved brokers. You, the lender, deposit XRP; the broker lends it out to borrowers under its own rules for who qualifies and how much backing they must post; and you earn an APR paid in XRP. The simulator models a single broker whose every dial is yours to set — the interest rate it pays, the size of its own first-loss cushion, and its loss-given-default — so you can recreate anything from a cautious lender (higher cushion, lower rate) to an aggressive one (thin cushion, higher rate). The trade-off, always, is more yield versus how hard a borrower default hits you when one happens.

RLUSD

Ripple's USD-pegged stablecoin issued on XRPL. The simulator uses RLUSD as the counterparty asset in the XRP/RLUSD AMM LP strategy; it's modelled as a perfect peg (no depeg events are scheduled against RLUSD, unlike USDC).

FXRP

A stand-in token that represents your XRP on the Flare network, one-for-one. It's created by "bridging" — locking your real XRP and minting a matching FXRP on Flare, where it can be used in Flare apps. The Flare-Firelight strategy uses FXRP as its entry step: bridge XRP → receive FXRP → stake it into Firelight's stXRP.

stXRP

Firelight's staked XRP token — a yield-bearing wrapper around FXRP that pays an XRP-denominated APR drawn from staking rewards and protocol fees. The simulator models stXRP yield as the headline rate of the Flare-Firelight strategy; the bridging step itself pays nothing (it's the precondition for participating in stXRP yield, not a separate yield stream).

App-specific terms

Horizon

How long the simulation runs. Default 36 months (3 years) — long enough to capture cycle dynamics, short enough that the deterministic-path simplifications don't strain credulity. Every chart line is computed at month boundaries from month 0 (deployment) to the horizon end.

Deterministic

A simulation property: given the same inputs, the engine produces the same output, every time. No random walk, no Monte Carlo sampling, no clock or session dependency. YieldSim is deterministic by design and forever — the chart's answer is exactly what your inputs imply, provably. Change a single assumption and the chart moves in the direction that assumption affects; switch scenarios to see how strategies hold up under different worlds. See the Methodology page's "Why deterministic, not probabilistic" section for the full tradeoff.

Scenario

A pre-built XRP/USD price path plus optional stress events. The dashboard's scenario picker selects one scenario at a time; every strategy is then re-run against that scenario so the chart compares like-for-like. Every scenario carries TWO risk badges — see Frequency and Severity below — so the user can read "how often" and "how bad" as independent dimensions instead of conflating them. You can author your own custom path on the Custom Scenario Builder. Each scenario is deterministic — the same path, every time — paired with whichever assumption values you've chosen.

Scenario frequency (Routine / Episodic / Rare)

First of the two scenario-risk axes — answers "how often does a path shape like this show up in real crypto history?" Routine = base case of any given crypto year (sustained chop, slow grind up, slow grind down, sideways); Episodic = documented multiple times in the last decade (parabolic blow-off tops, single-broker stress, brief stablecoin depegs); Rare = at most a handful of documented occurrences across the entire crypto era (full bridge drains, exchange-collapse-class fraud). This is a count of how often something LIKE this has happened in the past, not a prediction — the simulator never claims to know the future. See the Scenarios section above for the per-scenario classification, and the click-to-open explainer on each badge for more.

Scenario severity (Mild / Significant / Catastrophic)

Second of the two scenario-risk axes — answers "if a strategy is exposed to this scenario, how badly can it go for the deployed capital?" Measured against the worst-exposed strategy in the catalog, NOT a probability claim. Mild = no permanent USD loss; any drawdown recovers in horizon or is offset by net price appreciation. Significant = substantial drawdown OR partial position loss with no in-horizon recovery; the worst-exposed strategy ends meaningfully below deployment USD but not at zero. Catastrophic = total or near-total wipeout of an exposed position; the pedagogical "this can take you to zero" tier. A scenario can be Rare × Catastrophic (Bridge Exploit, Celsius Redux) OR Routine × Mild (Holding Pattern, Choppy Sideways) — frequency and severity vary independently.

XRP appreciation

Your expected percent change in the XRP/USD price between deployment and the end of your horizon — the single most consequential assumption in the simulator for any XRP-denominated strategy. 0% means flat (no net price change); 100% means a doubling; 1000% means an 11× run; -50% means a 50% drawdown. Lives as a prominent input on the dashboard above the scenario picker. Each built-in scenario carries a canonical default that pre-loads into the input when you pick it (Slow Bull +100%, Crypto Winter −68%, Holding Pattern 0%, and so on) — override to test the same scenario shape at any magnitude. USD-denominated strategies (HYSA, USDC DeFi, T-bills) ignore the knob entirely.

Shape vs magnitude

Two parts of any scenario the simulator runs. The shape is what happens between deployment and horizon end — smooth ramp, choppy oscillation, parabolic spike-and-settle, multi-segment whipsaw, late-pump. The magnitude is where the path lands at the end, set by the XRP appreciation knob. Picking a scenario chooses the shape; the appreciation input sets the destination. The two compose freely — "Slow Bull at +100%" (the canonical default) and "Slow Bull at +500%" are both valid runs of the same smooth-ramp shape.

Assumption

A tunable numeric input the simulation engine reads — an APR, a first-loss size, an LGD, a fee yield. Each assumption has a stable key, a default value, and a definition. The Assumptions page is the canonical reference. Because the engine is deterministic, you own every assumption value and the chart shows you exactly what those values imply; pair an assumption set with a scenario to see the outcome.

Strategy

A single line on the dashboard's comparison chart — one way of putting your money to work. The simulator ships with ten standalone strategies, plus the Custom Portfolio composer that blends any of them by the weights you choose in the sidebar (eleven lines on the chart in all). Each standalone strategy turns your capital, the chosen scenario, and your assumption values into a month-by-month dollar value.

Custom Portfolio

Your own blend: a mix you build by giving each of the 10 standalone strategies a whole-number percentage (they must add up to 100). The Custom Portfolio line on the chart is just the weighted sum of those pieces, called "legs." Bad events land inside the leg they affect — a stablecoin depeg only dents the USDC slice, a broker default only dents that broker's slice, and so on. It's the see-through opposite of earnXRP: both spread your money across several things, but earnXRP hides what's inside while Custom Portfolio shows and lets you tune every piece.

About

What YieldSim is

YieldSim is an educational passive-income strategy simulator for cryptocurrency and adjacent yield products. Tune the assumptions, pick a market scenario, and see how a hypothetical capital deployment would perform across strategies side-by-side.

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