In a notable resurgence from last year’s market downturn, the cryptocurrency XRP has recently added nearly $3 billion to its market capitalization. The token, which has been affected by an ongoing legal battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has piqued investor interest amid a wider market rebound.
Over the past week, however, XRP’s value has risen over 11%, surpassing the $0.5 mark. The cryptocurrency is at the time of writing trading at $0.519 per token after moving up around 2% in the past 24 hours.
As the cryptocurrency’s price rises so does its market capitalization, which moved from around $24.1 billion to $26.8 billion in just a few days as investors pile up on the cryptocurrency.
Notably earlier this week, prominent crypto lawyer John E. Deaton noted he believes that at $0.48, the price of XRP was low, and that many who hesitate in buying it now will be buying it above the $1 mark. Per his words, there would be fear of missing out kicking in at around $2 per token.
The XRP token hit a new all-time high in late 2017 during a bull market that saw the price of Bitcoin near the $20,000 mark for the first time. XRP’s all-time high was above $3.
Behind XRP’s rise could be a number of factors, including the XRP Ledger, the native network of XRP, seeing its second and third-largest address activity spikes of all time, in the span of just two days. The event could potentially signify upcoming substantial changes in the network’s market position.
The number of addresses interacting with the network recently ballooned to an unprecedented 490,000, according to on-chain analytics firm Santiment. The 490,000 figure isn’t far behind the largest ever recorded spike on March 18th, which triggered a remarkable 45% surge in XRP’s price over the following ten days.
Address activity in a cryptocurrency network refers to the number of unique addresses partaking in transactions within a given timeframe. High address activity typically indicates a lively and robust network with a significant number of users.
The reasons behind the spikes in address activity on the XRP Ledger aren’t clear, although the cryptocurrency has seen its price rise earlier this month on reports that the SEC’s case against Ripple Labs, a major player in the cryptocurrency’s ecosystem, is now tilting in favor of the fintech firm.
The SEC sued Ripple and two of its executives, who are also significant XRP holders, alleging they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering,” back in December 2020.
Federal judge Analisa Torres ordered the regulator to produce documents related to a 2018 speech by William Hinman, the former Director of Corporation Finance for the SEC. In his speech, Hinman stated his view that Ether ($ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was not a security under U.S. law.
The ruling allows the SEC to redact the personal information of individuals mentioned in the documents, but otherwise rejects the SEC’s claim of privilege over the documents and grants some of Ripple’s requests to redact certain information, such as contracts, financial data, and other details, but denies others that are deemed “overbroad”, especially those concerning XRP, the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple.
The disclosure of the documents could have implications for XRP’s legal status as a security or a non-security. Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse has recently expressed optimism that the lawsuit will be resolved in the next two to six months.
Earlier this week, Ripple unveiled a tailored for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This unique platform, which is based on the $XRP Ledger, aims to empower central banks, governments, and financial institutions to create and manage their own digital currencies.
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