XRPthe native token of the XRP Ledger network which is closely related to Ripple, climbed to a six-year high on Wednesday as bitcoin (BTC) rally to $100,000, with traders encouraged by the prospect this morning US CPI inflation data report.
The token briefly topped $3 in the early US trading session for the first time since early January 2018, before paring gains. Recently changing hands at $2.95, it is up 11% over the past 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin (BTC)’s 3.6% and the broad market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index’s 6.7% advance over the same period. .
XRP is among the best-performing tokens, with a 488% gain since Donald Trump’s election victory. It has now become the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind BTC and Ethereum’s ether (ETH), taking back its third rank from Tether’s USDT stablecoin. With a $170 billion market cap, the token is now larger than the asset management giant’s market capitalization BlackRock (BLK).
The gain was fueled by the prospect of crypto-friendly policies and an overhaul of digital asset regulation in the US The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple are in a legal battle for years over XRP token sales.
“This surge is driven by an increasing number of partnerships, the launch of Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD, and speculation about a potential spot XRP ETF,” said Diego Cardenas, OTC trader at digital asset platform Abra , in a note shared with CoinDesk. Ripple President Monica Long said in an interview last week that he expects a spot ETF to be approved “soon” because approvals in the incoming administration will be expedited.
XRP has also broken out of the consolidation pattern that began in early December that CoinDesk markets analyst Omkar Godbole mentioned last week, paving the way for the next leg in the token’s rally. Another 15% increase from current prices would mean new all-time highs above the 2018 January high of $3.4. However, adjusting for inflation in recent years, XRP would need to break above $4.24 for a new high, Galaxy head of research Alex Thorn said in a X post.
Big investors who have been accumulating XRP tokens over the past two months could also fuel the rally towards new records.
Analytics firm Santiment mentioned that addresses holding between 1 million and 10 million tokens increased their holdings by 1.4 billion coins — worth about $3.8 billion — since November 12, continuing the accumulation as prices consolidated -same following the high prices of early December.
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