XRP Hits 7-Year High Above $3 as Large Holders Accumulate $3.8B of Tokens
XRP, the native token of the XRP Ledger network closely related to Ripple, surged to a six-year high on Wednesday as bitcoin BTCUSD rallied to $100,000, with traders encouraged by this morning's highly-anticipated U.S. CPI inflation data report.
The token briefly topped $3 during early U.S. trading session for the first time since early 2018 January, before slightly paring gains. Recently changing hands at $2.95, it was 11% over the past 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin's BTCUSD 3.6% and the broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index's 6.7% advances during the same period.
XRP has been among the best-performing tokens, with a 488% gain since Donald Trump's election victory. It has now become the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind BTC and Ethereum's ether ETHUSD, reclaiming its third ranking from Tether's USDT stablecoin. At $170 billion of market value, the token is now larger than the market capitalization of asset management giant BlackRock BBLK.The gain was fueled by anticipation of crypto-friendly policies and an overhaul of digital asset regulation in the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple have been in a legal battle for years over XRP token sales.
Analytics firm Santiment noted that addresses holding between 1 million and 10 million tokens increased their holdings by 1.4 billion coins — worth roughly $3.8 billion — since November 12, continuing the accumulation while prices consolidated following early December highs.Read more: XRP Interest Jumps as Brad Garlinghouse Meets With Trump