The crypto market got a much-needed “all green” day today; after seeing its total market cap drop below $200 million and coins like ETH hit 2018 lows. Coins like Stellar, Cardano, QTUM, and 0x all saw double-digit increases.
But one coin has rocketed high above the rest: Ripple’s XRP token. We’ve just recently made the case for why Ripple price might see some positive action, though no analysts called for a meteoric rise like this.
Explanations For Ripple XRP’s Price Increase
So what’s going on? Well, there’s no singular explanation for today. Just a few reasons combined into one for now (until we find out that perhaps someone or something knows something that we’ll all find out soon).
Trading Fundamentals
Analysts saw Ripple’s deep summer sell-offs as a sign that the coin had dipped into oversold territory. Bottoms were called out near $.30 which Ripple hit this week and had consolidated around for several days.
Some say this specifically on the XRP/BTC trading chart, like this Tradingview user:
XRP repeat history? Bullish Breakout! by maybemaybe on TradingView.com
xRapid
But it seems like there’d be something underlying the fundamentals for such a dynamic boost. And that’s right. Ripple made headlines this week as it announced that its xRapid product was coming soon; as early as next month. The build-up for the product; already touted by the Foundation and some banking partners, is crucial for Ripple’s success, and this is an early testament to the speculation on that.
xRapid already has 19 banking institutions lined up for use; with estimates out there that xRapid’s functionality could save between 40-70% on trading fees.
Volume
We wouldn’t see a price hike of +60% (was 90% at one point today) without a massive influx of money coming in. And XRP saw huge jumps in trading volume, hitting over $1.5 billion in XRP traded (compared to something around $250 million for a day earlier in the week).
Now some volume should be attributed to FOMO’ers coming in to buy XRP after seeing the huge green jump (and a green jump that far outpaced other coins), as well as XRP overtaking ETH for #2 on the charts—but the original spike of volume means there were some serious XRP whales coming in the market today—a good sign for both Ripple and the crypto market at large.
Banks, Banks, Banks!
2018 has been a bear market and the general feelings around crypto have been negative. Projects have been burdened by falling ETH values raised in ICOS and debates, regulatory battles, and more have waged war on so many coins. But not Ripple. It’s spent 2018 quietly (relative term) building its cache of banks and financial partners up, even while XRP prices crashed over 80%.
Just this week, Ripple bagged top-ten U.S.bank PNC as a partner in using its technology for cross-border payments. That means Ripple has partnerships with top banks in nearly every major economy in the world; and dozens more on top of that.
So today’s optimism may not have been sprung from one announcement, but from careful investors taking note of what Ripple is building and pouncing on a coin that had fallen in value. From there, one those investors got in, FOMO carried it to where it is now. We’ll see where it ends up!
