Renewed bullish fervor in the cryptocurrency market has led to new upward movement for most major digital assets, with bitcoin registering a new all-time high below $108,000 and ether managing to remain above $4,000. XRP, now the third-largest digital asset by market capitalization, has however outperformed and is up nearly 14% today.
The performance of the native token of the XRP Ledger has been superior to that of both BTC and ETH over the past week, registering a 21.5% rise in the period compared to the flagship cryptocurrency’s 9.6% upward move and ether’s 6.8% gain.
XRP is now trading at $2.72 per token and has a market capitalization of $155.2 billion, consolidating its position as the third-largest digital asset above Tether’s $140 billion market cap.
The price of XRP seems to be surging over hype surrounding the launch of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. The highly-anticipated cryptocurrency is pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar and positions Ripple in direct competition with established stablecoins issuers, which include Tether, Circle, and PayPal.
The fintech firm has noted that RLUSD will be “available on global exchanges” and that each token is “fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. government bonds, and cash equivalents.” The firm will bolster the stablecoin’s transparency through independent monthly audits.
RLUSD will initially be available on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, but there are plans to expand it to additional blockchains and decentralized finance applications. According to CoinDesk, RLUSD’s launch has attracted bids of up to 836 XRP on on-chain marketplaces ahead of the release.
This effectively means some users were bidding up to $2,000 per RLUSD — a cryptocurrency redeemable for $1 — to get a chance of being among the first to hold the stablecoin. The frenzy could mean that, at launch, RLUSD isn’t able to maintain its peg.
Ripple CTO David Schwartz has said on social media, however, that while there are traders bidding heavily to get their hands on RLUSD as fast as possible, the price “will come back to very close to $1 as soon as supply stabilizes.”
Featured image via Pixabay.
