Cardano ($ADA) has become the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after surpassing $XRP amid a wider cryptocurrency market recovery that saw ADA’s price rise well over 25% in the last 24 hours.
According to available data, Cardano’s market capitalization is currently above $21.7 billion, while XRP’s market capitalization stands at $20.2 billion. Over the last 24 hours, ADA moved up nearly 25%, while XRP moved up little over 5%.
As CryptoGlobe reported, over 5 million native assets have now been minted on top of the Cardano blockchain, doubling the figure seen at the end of last year. There are now 5.01 million native assets on Cardano deployed across over 54,800 policies. Minting policies, according to Cardano’s documentation, are a “set of rules that govern the minting and burning of assets scoped under that policy.”
Native tokens themselves are bespoke assets that can be interacted with “right out of the box – without the use of smart contracts.” The network’s documentation notes native assets can “practically be treated as ada in every sense because the capability is already built-in.”
Data has also shown that ADA whale transactions have shot up to a 4-month high after the price of the cryptocurrency plunged to a bottom at $0.40 earlier this year. Whales were seemingly buying the dip ahead of an upcoming hard fork that will improve the network’s performance. That hard fork, known as the Vasil hard fork, is set to deliver a “massive improvement” to the network.
Meanwhile, the price of XRP has been negatively affected by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, who has sold over 450 million tokens so far this year and still has over 220 million on his wallet.
McCaleb is said to have started working on Ripple back in 2011, and was part of its founding team when the firm launched in 2013. While he left it in 2014 to work on Stellar (XLM), he was awarded 8 billion XRP tokens for his role in developing and founding OpenCoin, which was later rebranded to Ripple.
The entrepreneur receives the funds on a fixed schedule and has made it clear via XRP Talk, a forum for XRP investors and proponents, that he plans on selling the funds he receives them.
XRP is also negatively being affected by a lawsuit brought on by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Ripple, in which the regulator alleged the firm and two of its executives “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”
A panel of cryptocurrency industry experts has predicted that the price of XRP will hit $2.55 by the end of the year, and sees it go as high as $3.61 by the end of 2025, and $4.98 by the end of 2030.
The panel’s prediction is based on Ripple having a positive outcome in its case against the SEC. Should Ripple lose, the panel sees XRP’s value drop to $0.68.
Newsletter
To make sure you receive a FREE weekly newsletter that features highlights from our most popular stories, click here.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
Image Credit
Featured image via Unsplash
