We have seen quite a few cryptocurrencies go through a pump-and-dump cycle the past few days. Bitcoin Cash was the first, followed by Monero – which seems to maintain its price- and now Ripple’s XRP asset is skyrocketing in value as well. All three currencies have one thing in common: their majority of trading volume during the day of the value increase came from Korea’s Bithumb exchange.Owners of the XRP asset will be quite pleased with how things are going, although it remains to be seen if this value will remain locked in place.
WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE XRP PRICE THESE DAYS?
A lot of people were quite surprised when the XRP price hit $0.33 earlier this year. In fact, that happened in May of 2017, which almost feels as if it was years ago. We have seen so many changes in the world of cryptocurrency over the past few weeks and XRP is certainly a part of those changes. After its initial bull run in May, things took a turn for the worst as far as XRP was concerned. The price continuously declined for weeks on end and eventually settled around the $0.14 mark.
Considering there are over 38 billion XRP in circulation right now, that value is still relatively high. With the recent XPR price increase pushing the value to $0.28, the market cap has grown to a total of $10.77bn. Considering how Ripple’s market cap jumped from under a billion to this number throughout 2017, it’s not hard to see why the digital asset has been so successful. In fact, its success is quite similar to some of the main cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Unfortunately, it is hard to predict how things will evolve for the XRP price moving forward. After all, this current price action has all of the signs of a clear pump-and-dump scheme. Some users may not like to hear that, but it is evident there are forces at work which will certainly influence the XRP price over the coming hours and potentially even days. With Korea’s Bithumb exchange bringing in over $1bn in trading volume and the other Korean exchanges generating over $650m in combined volume, it is evident this momentum wouldn’t take place were it not for South Korea.
We have seen similar momentum where Bitcoin Cash was concerned a few days ago. For some unknown reason, the BCH price went up quite a bit before eventually crashing down again. Right now, the BCH price is unsuccessful in its attempt to stabilize, and the current mining difficulty increase makes it unprofitable to mine Bitcoin Cash. The coming days and weeks will not be easy for Bitcoin Cash, even though its network hashrate has grown a bit. On the other hand, the network blocks are pretty far apart once again, resulting in about one block being found every hour today. Not a positive sign by any means.
Focusing back on the XRP price for a minute, it is evident the trading volume across Korean exchanges can dry up at any given moment. If that is the case, nearly 75% of all current XRP volume will be wiped off in a heartbeat. That will evidently result in a major XRP price decrease, although no one can tell where things would end up at. It is not unlikely we will see an entire XRP price retrace over the coming days, depending on how long the volume across Korean exchanges remains this high. In most cases, that will not last all that long.
There is no denying Ripple and its XRP asset have their place in the financial sector. This is not your average cryptocurrency either by any means. XRP is a digital asset that is not designed to rival Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other major cryptocurrency right now. Instead, it is designed to change the financial sector as a whole in its own way. Various financial institutions are already paying attention to what the company is doing with its technology, that much is evident. However, the value of XRP remains to be determined by the market, rather than speculators and daytraders.