XRP, the native token of the USA this morning.
The token briefly surpassed $3 during early US trading sessions for the first time since early January 2018, before paring gains slightly. It recently changed hands at $2.95 and was up 11% in the last 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin’s (BTC) 3.6% advance and the benchmark CoinDesk 20 index’s 6.7% advance during the same period.
XRP has been among the best-performing tokens, gaining 488% since Donald Trump’s election victory. It has now become the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind BTC and Ethereum’s ether (ETH), regaining its third ranking against Tether’s USDT stablecoin. With a market value of $170 billion, the token is now larger than the market capitalization of asset management giant BlackRock (BLK).
The gain was driven by anticipation of pro-cryptocurrency policies and an overhaul of digital asset regulation in the US. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple have been in a legal battle for years over the sales. of XRP tokens.
“This surge is driven by a growing number of partnerships, the launch of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, and speculation over a possible XRP spot ETF,” said Diego Cárdenas, OTC trader and digital asset platform Abra, in a note shared with CoinDesk. Ripple President Monica Long said in an interview last week that she expects a spot ETF to be approved “very soon” as approvals accelerate under the incoming administration.
XRP also broke the consolidation pattern started in early December that CoinDesk markets analyst Omkar Godbole flagged last week, paving the way for the next leg in the token’s rally. Another 15% rise from current prices would mean new all-time highs above the January 2018 high of $3.4. Still, adjusting for inflation over the years, XRP has to break above $4.24 to reach a new high, Galaxy research head Alex Thorn said in an X post.
The accumulation of XRP tokens by large investors over the past two months could also fuel the rally to new records.
Analytics firm Santiment noted that addresses holding between 1 million and 10 million tokens increased their holdings by 1.4 billion coins (worth about $3.8 billion) since Nov. 12, continuing the accumulation as prices They were consolidating after the highs of early December.
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