Ripple (XRP) – The gains seen in cryptocurrency’s Wall Street Rush of 2017 were a first—when values of a long list of coins surged 10 to 20 times in about a month, reaching zeniths in early January of 2018. It was during this jet-fueled trajectory of assets that XRP rocketed from about $.24 U.S. to $3.80, between December 11 and January 4.
From there, XRP owners (or unfortunately former owners who were spooked by the January drop and sold their XRP), know that Ripple took a huge dive. Some blame coinmarketcap.com’s unannounced market listing correction of January 7, which eliminated the Korean market’s influence on their Ripple average-trading publishings—which instantly, within the time it took for a tech to click a button, dropped Ripple’s published price from $3.27 to $2.67, undermining the market’s faith in the coin and fueling a sell-off.
Some however blame Wall Street pumping and dumping for Ripple’s quick demise. Some blame the Chinese New Year and the accompanying tradition of filling little red envelopes with cash to give to children and single adults. That cash has to come from somewhere, and why not from a healthy year’s profits of crypto?
And of course, some blame the XRP whales who, unlike the HODLers, sold high and then rebought XRP low, very low, tripling or quadrupling their XRP assets or more from the illustrious height of $3.80 (which was actually at about $3.25 in U.S. markets), to the dismal display of XRP value seen just a few days ago.
Likely it was a vortex of all of these elements that sunk XRP’s value like an anchor into what seemed like an unknown depth of losses when the coin hit its lowest valuation yet of the year on February 6—a measly $.59 USD.
Since then, however, XRP seems like it might be back on a track to the crypto stratosphere, approximately doubling in value within four days. And if XRP is back on track, the $1.15 USD price tag that America woke up to today is nothing. Nothing at all.
WHERE Ripple (XRP) CAN GO
Coin is about profit. Sort of. But it’s also a game, a race. At least in public perception. People want to invest in a winner, and the market cap of a coin is a perceptual indicator of future value. After all, coin is about the future. And betting on a leader is betting on the future value of a coin.
When XRP hit its $3.80 zenith on January 4, it overtook ETH to win the second-place market-cap value of all cryptocurrency. Now, however, Ripple remains in the third position behind Bitcoin and Ether, respectively. In this current crypto moment, however, when BTC has dropped to half of it’s January value and ETH has dropped nearly as much, their market caps are theoretically within reach of XRP—that is if Ripple can ascend to its January 4 high in a burst of momentum and decorrelate from the BTC and ETH markets.
What that means is that the next few days (or even hours) are crucial for those watching the XRP value closely. A quick XRP rise would allow XRP to overtake the BTC market cap, which now with BTC’s current $8,816 USD price puts it at about $148 billion.
At $3.80, XRP would have a market cap of about $145 billion. At $4, XRP would take the lead and surpass Bitcoin, assuming that any Bitcoin or Ether gains remain sluggish compared with Ripple’s. From there, with a lead in the market, XRP will rocket yet again, leaving the Bitcoin and Ether big boys considerably behind, for a while at least.
So the question is really whether the Wall Street manipulators, the average joe investors, and especially the XRP whales are looking to this crypto moment as an opportunity to become number one in the crypto market-cap game. And if that’s the case, get ready for an interesting ride, because you ain’t seen nothing yet in the universe of XRP.
DISCLOSURE: I own some XRP and several other coins.