As Bitcoin hovers near $100,000 per coin, altcoins are having a party, especially those coins that were widely popular in previous cycles but have since lost their significance to new projects.
One such old coin that is hogging all the limelight and liquidity from the market is XRP. The very same XRP that was once going to gain real-world adoption among banks and has been involved in a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now back on people’s minds and portfolios.
XRP was originally developed in 2011, so it’s one of the original coins that is still in existence today. At the time of the XRP Ledger’s launch, the founders pre-mined 100 billion tokens, which is all the XRP in existence.
Out of these, 80 billion tokens were given to Ripple, a separate fintech entity that builds global payment systems to fund the project’s future development, operations, expansion, and adoption. The rest of the 20 billion XRP tokens were divided among the founders. So, whenever Ripple and its founders sell coins from their stash, new coins enter the market. As of writing, there are just over 57 billion XRP coins in circulation, according to CoinGecko.
When it comes to price, XRP is currently trading at $2.65, up a whopping 430% since November 5, when the entire crypto market started its bullish mania driven by Republican President-elect Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.
For some, this insane jump may seem out of the ordinary, but not only are such moves normal in crypto but XRP, in particular, is known for sudden price bursts.
For instance, during the 2017 bull market, XRP started the year around $0.0065, and it was still trading at this level in mid-March when, in less than a month, its price had over a 10x surge in its value, and then in May, it further went up, above $0.46. In the same year, the price was trading around $0.2 when the price started pumping ten days into that month. This face-melting rally had XRP price hitting an all-time high (ATH) of $3.40 on January 7, 2018, representing an increase of more than 520x in its value in just over a year.
While XRP price rallied strongly in the 2021 bull market, the performance wasn’t anywhere near the 2017 cycle. The last bull cycle saw XRP price only pulling a 10x, as it went from $0.2 at the beginning of that year to almost $2 in April 2021.
So, XRP hasn’t hit a new peak in almost seven years. But the market hopes are high this time around as the crypto asset shows renewed signs of life. XRP was actually doing mostly nothing while the broad crypto market rallied this past two years, but it finally changed with the US election win.
Suddenly, the market was bid aggressively on XRP. In less than a month, XRP’s price surpassed the 2021 high, hitting $2.9 on December 3. As of writing, XRP/USD has been trading at $2.64 while managing $42.5 billion in 24-hour volume, which is 4th largest after Tether, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
With these latest gains, the $149 billion market cap XRP has overtaken Solana (SOL) and Tether (USDT) to become the 3rd largest cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, its price is now only 22.7% away from its ATH.
Interestingly, XRP is far closer to its peak than ETH, which is 23.7% away from its 2021 high of $4,880, and Dogecoin, which is 42.6% off of the $0.731 peak. So, what’s behind XRP’s strong price performance?
‘Dino’ Coins Capturing Retail & Even Crypto Attention
The crypto market participants, who have been here through all the ups and downs, busy trying to get rid of bear market PTSD, getting chopped, chasing airdrops, and accumulating newer coins for a new bull market, the mainstream retail investors completely bypassed those and either went into different new coins like the CHILLGUY or chose the old route.
XRP is one of those coins that investors heavily bid among old coins. These so-called ‘dino’ coins are cryptocurrencies that once had exciting use cases and all the popularity but have since lost ground to other new projects.
Besides XRP, the old coins that pumped significantly involve Litecoin (LTC), Tron (TRX), Cardano (ADA), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Hedera (HBAR), Chainlink (LINK), VeChain (VET), EOS, IOTA (IOTA), and NEO among others.
Among the top 50 cryptocurrencies, the biggest gainers of this year have been Pepe (1,532%), SUI (386%), DOGE (368.75%), XRP (329%), XLM (300%), HBAR (279%), TRX (267%), and TON (206%). This shows that just a one-month surge was enough to put these coins into the top gainers that sent the total crypto market cap past $3.7 trillion.
The signs of mainstream retail interest in the market can be seen from the major US crypto exchange Coinbase‘s (COIN +6.03%) app climbing the ranks in the app store.
At the beginning of November, the Coinbase app was in the 30th spot in the finance apps category and had a 339 ranking among all apps. By the middle of the month, it was the top finance app while making its way to the top 10 apps overall.
While in the second half of the month, the Coinbase app started to lose traction, December’s got a good start as it now captures the 10th spot among all apps. All this time, the app continued to maintain its position among the top 10 financial apps.
So, retail is clearly interested in crypto. As for why old coins, they are already familiar with these coins, and instead of buying into new coins, which have simply become too many with thousands being launched every day, retail is sticking to the safety of what they know instead of ending up being exit liquidity for crypto participants.
Also, unlike newer coins, old ones haven’t really been pumped, not until now. So, while these new cryptocurrencies are only a few percent off of their ATHs, old coins are far off their peaks, which gives investors hope for more sizable gains.
Interestingly, on one side, crypto market residents are able to sell their Bitcoin bags to institutions and may even get the chance to sell Ethereum bags too, if it is finally able to see some traction; they have no such luck with altcoins with retail not too keen on Solana-based meme coins or bridging to Blast.
In fact, all these old coins are now catching the bid not only from mainstream retail investors but even the crypto market participants who are now forced to look in the past for potential gains.
Korean Investors Contributing to the Surge
When it comes to retail investors sending the price of a crypto asset skywards, the first thing that comes to mind is South Korea, which has a reputation for being heavily engaged in degenerate gambling.
So, it makes sense that they have been involved in XRP, too. In fact, XRP is the most traded asset among South Koreans, more than any other cryptocurrency, including Tether, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
They are actually mostly engaging in ‘dino’ coins including Dogecoin, Tron, Hedera, Stellar, Cardano, EOS, IOTA, NEO, Shiba Inu (SHIB), Ethereum Classic (ETC), The Sandbox (SAND), and Algorand (ALGO).
Still, XRP/KRW has captured the most attention, accounting for 25.87% and 26.29% of the total volume recorded by the two most popular South Korean crypto exchanges, Bithumb and Upbit, respectively.
According to CoinGecko, the XRP/KRW trading pair has a $1.6 bln volume on Bithumb and $7.5 bln on Upbit. Meanwhile, XRP/USD on Coinbase has $1.58 bln in 24-hour trading volume, which is again the most traded pair, accounting for the exchange’s 16.89% of all trading activity. As for Binance, in the past 24 hours, XRP/USDT has been the top pair with $4.46 bln in volume, having nearly 8% of the exchange’s volume.
Interestingly, the recent decline in XRP price, which was also in part due to investors realizing more than $4 billion in profits in the last few days, came on the news that South Korean President Yoon has declared martial law, triggering panic selling among investors. This led to prices on Korean exchanges straying from the general market.
XRP was obviously one of the most affected ones, whose price briefly fell to $1.89 on local crypto exchanges before they temporarily halted trading. But the price recovered soon after as whales rushed in to gobble up coins at discounted prices.
“Many whales transferred large amounts of USDT to Upbit, likely aiming for bottom-fishing opportunities.”
– Lookonchain noted on X
Not Just Retail But Whales are also Interested
Usually, big investors stick to majors. This is because the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum have a big enough market cap and volume that big buy or sell orders do not negatively impact the market and the investor.
Bitcoin is a $1.9 trillion market cap cryptocurrency, which sees $75.8 billion in trading volume in a day, while Ethereum is a $448.6 billion market cap with 44 bln in volume. But everyone loves the outsized gains that small cap coins offer as they are easy to move, although XRP is not a tiny coin.
Latest data show that whales may also have been investing in XRP through Nasdaq-listed Coinbase (COIN). This is seen in the XRP/USD pair on Coinbase, which has been constantly trading higher than the XRP/USDT pair on Binance these past 30 days.
Data from analytics firm CryptoQuant shows minute-level premiums ranging from 3% to 13%, which is a sign of whales being active on Coinbase, as per CryptoQuant’s CEO Ki Young Ju.
It is likely that the incoming administration will power this premium on Coinbase as the market expects pro-crypto policies and other industry-friendly movies from Trump’s second term after he made several promises to the crypto community on his campaign trail.
“The WSJ describes Trump’s second term as a ‘new era for crypto—with fewer government hurdles.’ Under a ‘litigation peace,’ according to the asset’s proponents, XRP will become more accessible to major financial institutions using the asset as a ‘bridge currency’ for foreign exchange.”
– FRNT Financial noted in a newsletter
While explaining the XRP rally and increasing volumes on US-based exchanges, FRNT further noted Trump’s crypto friendliness to boost the idea of payments-focused XRP becoming “ubiquitous in international capital flows as a ‘bridge currency’ when settling foreign exchange.”
However, volume trends show Korean leadership in the XRP market due to the crypto asset not being widely available for trading in the US. The delisting of XRP from the US market was the result of Ripple facing legal action from the US SEC, which alleged that the company violated securities law by raising $1.38 billion by selling XRP to institutions and retail investors.
Ripple and its executives were first charged by the SEC in 2020, but a favorable resolution prompted exchanges like Coinbase to re-list XRP.
Yet another sign of whale activity was seen in the Whale to Exchange Flow, which has been having a significant increase in level that hasn’t been seen since XRP was first launched.
Crypto brokerage firm FalconX’s Head of Revenue and Business, Austin Reid, also noted in a post on X that the platform has seen a tenfold growth in its volume between the first and second halves of the ongoing quarter. He added:
“This isn’t just retail action — institutions are driving the momentum.”
XRP investment products, according to CoinShares digital assets weekly report, further saw $95 million in net inflows. The highest weekly inflow for XRP came as expectations around the potential approval of an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US grew.
Click here to learn all about investing in pre-IPO shares of Ripple.
XRP Spot ETF Gains Traction
Ever since Bitcoin got its ETF in January, which has so far gotten $31.73 bln in total net inflows, ETF issuers have been trying to get more products approved for institutional exposure.
After Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital, WisdomTree is the latest one to file for an XRP spot ETF, with Bank of New York Mellon to serve as the administrator for its proposed trust.
Now that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, under whom the agency took several enforcement actions against crypto companies, including Ripple, is making an exit to make way for Trump’s appointee, the market is bullish on crypto ETFs, especially one for XRP.
As Trump joined office late in January, market experts expect the agency to drop the outstanding lawsuits, including the SEC’s long-running case against Ripple, which is currently making its way through the appeals court.
This isn’t all. The jump in XRP price has also led to increased activity on its blockchain. Just last week, regulated crypto broker and custodian Archax introduced a money market fund on the XRP Ledger. Archax is providing access to Abrdn’s US dollar Liquidity Fund (Lux) in tokenized form, for which Ripple will allocate $5 mln to encourage the broader trend of real-world assets (RWAs) on the XRPL.
While first for the network, the tokenization trend has already been thriving on other blockchains like XRP competitor Stellar (XLM), Ethereum, and Solana. Now, with its first-ever tokenized product, XRP is also jumping on the hot RWA trend that is projected by McKinsey & Company to reach $4 trillion by the end of this decade.
The XRP ecosystem is even seeing a surge in meme coin activity, with the likes of ARMY, MAG, and BEAR gaining traction, propelled by the rally in the token’s price.
Another bullish news for XRP is Ripple’s own stablecoin RLUSD, which is close to getting a green light from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Upon approval, RLUSD will be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, which Ripple acquired earlier this year.
“For another well-capitalized, highly regulated player to enter into the global stablecoin marketplace… is a win-win,” said Keith Grossman, president of Enterprise at MoonPay, a payment provider Ripple will collaborate with for the rollout of stablecoin.
Final Thoughts
After enjoying nearly a month-long uptrend, XRP is currently taking a breather, though above $2, and there’s clear space for the crypto asset to run unabandoned. With that, open interest in the XRP market has reached a new high of $3.87 billion, and many are now contemplating shorting it, which remains to be seen if that’s a smart move given XRP’s history with run-ups.
As XRP makes new highs, people are now also calling for targets like $10 per token. Even the old $589 per XRP meme is starting to make its way back. However, while all the momentum can send the crypto asset to new highs, investors must remain cautious because crypto is highly volatile.
However, against the backdrop of rate cuts, an incoming pro-crypto administration, positive regulatory and institutional developments, the broad sector enjoying a bull market, the XRP Ledger seeing growing usage, and the latest events in South Korea triggering concerns of censorship potentially driving more investors toward crypto, XRP and the broad cryptocurrency space will potentially continue to be on an uptrend!
Click here to learn all about investing in Ripple (XRP).
