- A number of forces are driving Ripple’s cryptocurrency to stratospheric heights.
- Google data shows retail investors are more interested in XRP than Bitcoin.
- Incoming Trump administration may be key factor in XRP’s performance.
XRP is leaving the rest of the crypto market in the dust. That includes Bitcoin.
XRP surged 14% on Thursday as investors piled into the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple, the blockchain-based cross-border payments venture.
This was 13 times better than BTC, which ticked up a relatively minuscule 0.8%, according to CoinGecko data.
Internet search interest for XRP has also overtaken Bitcoin in the last week, according to data from Google Trends.
Even better, XRP has skyrocketed 45% in the last seven days, and it now sports a market value of $192 billion, making it the most valuable cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Trading at $3.35 in late afternoon action UK time, XRP is closing in on all time high of $3.40 in 2018.
Cheeky bid
Proponents of the Ripple-linked cryptocurrency are even eyeing a cheeky bid to upstage Ethereum’s market value given the latter’s price struggles.
Driving the bullishness is speculation that Ripple’s regulatory tussle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission may be drawing to a favourable end even though the agency has taken further action against the venture.
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This week, the SEC appealed a court ruling that Ripple’s sale of XRP tokens to retail investors didn’t violate securities law.
Usually, such an enforcement action dampens the price of the asset in question. Not this time.
‘Just noise’
Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty dismissed the lawsuit as “just noise” and contended the SEC was rehashing “already failed arguments.”
In the meantime, investors are betting that President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to replace Gary Gensler as SEC chair will end the agency’s legal crackdown on Ripple and other crypto players such as Coinbase and Binance.
Crypto advocate Paul Atkins, who is poised to face confirmation hearings by the US Senate in the weeks to come, is expected to take a far softer approach than the hard-charging Gensler. The onetime Goldman Sachs partner said he will step down on Monday.
Stopping probes
Last year, John Reed Stark, a former senior SEC official and an outspoken crypto critic, urged the regulator to halt all probes targeted at the industry following Trump’s election victory.
Stark also said most SEC cases will come to a screeching halt except the ones that involve egregious fraud.
Such sentiment is priming the pump for crypto investors.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has joined a long queue of crypto and tech leaders making the pilgrimage to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort during the presidential transition in recent weeks.
Many investors hope an XRP exchange-traded fund may hit the market, following the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs that were introduced in January.
Bitcoin ETFs attracted $107 billion in assets in 2024, making them the fastest growing such funds ever.
Altcoin ETFs
Several fund managers have started developing ETFs for Solana and other altcoins.
But they are unlikely to be approved since those tokens don’t have existing futures trading products in the US, which is one of the SEC’s prerequisites for green-lighting an ETF.
“It’s hard to know exactly how high a priority revising this framework is on the SEC’s agenda at this time,” Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, told DL News.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
