Ripple publishes the quarterly XRP Markets Report to voluntarily provide transparency and regular updates on the company’s views on the state of crypto generally including the XRP market, such as quarterly sales updates, relevant XRP-related announcements and commentary on previous quarter market developments. 

As an XRP holder, Ripple believes proactive communication and transparency are part of being a responsible stakeholder. Moreover, Ripple urges others in the industry to follow its lead to build trust, foster open communication and raise the bar, industry-wide.

Executive Summary 

The first quarter of 2021 was an exceptionally strong period for crypto. Total crypto market capitalization ballooned from ~$800B to almost $2T in the span of three months, and institutional adoption was once again a key driver of this gain. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs individually announced plans to include BTC as part of their wealth management offerings, while BlackRock began trading BTC futures. 

Over $3B worth of BTC ended up on the balance sheets of publicly traded corporations, which is roughly the value of all institutional purchases in 2020, and the industry saw a large-scale commercial use case when Tesla announced it began accepting BTC directly for payments. While there have been commercial uses of crypto including BitPay and Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity solution for years, Tesla is one of the first examples of a large non-financial services player jumping into the industry. 

As more sophisticated participants began entering the space, markets also became more leveraged, evidenced by the growth of derivative markets. Open interest in BTC and ETH futures tripled in the first quarter in February, which saw open interest grow to $150M from 0 during the quarter. Open interest in XRP futures doubled from $250M to $500M. That number temporarily shot up to $2.1B in the first two weeks of Q2. 

The growth of leverage is further exemplified by the number of forced liquidations that occurred in Q1. Three separate events individually contributed to $1.5B in liquidations across derivative exchanges when BTC price fell by only 10%. To put that into perspective, the 50% BTC crash in March 2020 which was dubbed Black Thursday, led to a total of $1.4B in liquidations.

The State of U.S. Crypto Regulation 

As we have said from the very beginning, the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple will have a profound impact on the crypto and fintech industry as a whole. A healthy market requires regulatory clarity and consistency, but the SEC’s current approach – regulation by enforcement – has caused havoc for U.S. XRP holders, developers, content providers and small businesses that use and rely on XRP and the XRP Ledger. The U.S. crypto industry needs a clear path forward and, as the lawsuit continues, we hope its outcome will provide some of the regulatory certainty that’s desperately needed for industry maturation and progress for all market participants in the U.S.

Key lawsuit updates since the previous report:

On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) Momentum Continues 

To meet growing demand for ODL, Ripple agreed to acquire 40% of Asia’s leading cross-border payments specialist, Tranglo. This partnership will help Ripple expand the reach of ODL to the APAC region, starting in Southeast Asia and supporting existing corridors such as the Philippines.

Disciplined, Responsible Stakeholders: Q1 Sales and Purchases 

Last quarter, total XRP sales by Ripple, net of purchases, were $150.34M (USD) vs. $76.27M the previous quarter. The increase in XRP sales can be attributed to deeper engagement from key ODL customers. For well over a year, Ripple has not sold programmatically.

Ripple continued to engage in sales to support ODL and key infrastructure partners as part of providing increased XRP liquidity to improve the ODL experience of certain customers, eliminating the need for pre-funding and enabling instant global payments. 

Total sales by Ripple, net of purchases, ended the quarter at 7 bps or 0.07% of global XRP volume according to CryptoCompare TopTier (CCTT) volumes. This is compared to total sales in the previous quarter of 5 bps according to CCTT. 

*ODL-related sales include leases, OTC and XRP sales to support ODL (including Line of Credit) and key infrastructure partners. 

**Note: Figures were compiled using the CryptoCompare API for daily TopTier aggregate volumes which reflects total XRP volume in dollars by exchanges that CryptoCompare lists in the TopTier. Ripple continues to evaluate its benchmarks given challenges, such as fake volume, that continue to persist in the industry.

Certain wallets that are being used for XRP sales also provide short-term leases to market makers. This is worth noting given they are often mischaracterized by market participants as sales. Leases are ultimately returned to Ripple. 

Reported Volume

CCTT’s reported daily volume for XRP increased significantly in Q1 2021 from Q4 2020. The average daily volume reported was $2.26B in Q1 vs. $1.61B in the previous quarter. Notably, XRP volumes posted four of the highest volume days ever old> standard deviation of daily returns over Q1 was 9.0%, representing a decrease in volatility from Q4’s 9.6%. XRP’s volatility over the quarter was higher than that of BTC (3.4%) and ETH (4.4%).

Ripple’s Escrow 

In Q1 2021, three billion XRP were released out of escrow (one billion each month) in line with prior quarters, and the official escrow arrangement. In total, 2.7 billion XRP were returned and subsequently put into new escrow contracts throughout the quarter. For more information on the escrow process, see here. Note: All figures are reported based on transactions executed during the quarter.

There was a slight uptick of conversation around Ripple “flooding the market” last quarter, as many continue to misunderstand the mechanics of the escrow process which are simply transfers between Ripple treasury and escrow management accounts. In other words, those transfers do not equate to Ripple distributing XRP.

Ripple is committed to transparency as reflected by this quarterly markets report. As noted above, XRP sales and distributions (such as leases which are returned to Ripple) can be attributed to ODL. Ripple plays a responsible role in the liquidity process. Outside of Ripple, however, large XRP holders do exist as is the case with other major cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH.

Accumulation 

Data indicates that Q1 2021 was a quarter of XRP accumulation. The number of “whale” wallets, defined as wallets with balances of at least 10M XRP, increased from 308 to 319. Similarly, the number of wallets holding between 1M and 10M XRP increased from 1,125 to 1,196. 

Similarly, ETH saw significant accumulation as well. The number of wallets holding at least 1,000 ETH increased from 1,178 to 1,253 during the quarter.

On-chain Metrics

Last quarter, the number of active XRPL wallets increased as on-ledger activity grew. In Q1, total on-ledger payment volume was $62.3B, representing a 23% increase quarter-on-quarter, while the number of total on-ledger wallet addresses increased 15% from 2.35M to 2.70M.  

XRP Integrations

Global XRP infrastructure saw significant development and innovation in Q1 and early Q2 including:

In addition, Wanchain and Huobi ECO Chain (HECO) built cross-chain bridges to the XRP Ledger, adding new integrations into DeFi. Separately, CoinShares, the largest crypto asset manager in Europe, launched an XRP exchange-traded product on the primary Swiss Stock Exchange SIX and reported a significant increase in XRP inflows.

Broader XRP Community 

For developers and entrepreneurs, the past quarter presented new opportunities to build various use cases on the XRP Ledger as interest in crypto continues to skyrocket. While no one company or individual can track every project being built on this open-source technology, there are hundreds of use cases from cross-border payments and lending to marketplaces and custody solutions.

Developers choose to build on the XRPL to take advantage of its green attributes and unique functionalities to move value. The XRP Ledger is the first major carbon-neutral blockchain and inherently energy efficient, alleviating high energy consumption and costs that developers experience when building on proof-of-work blockchains.

Ripple is just one player in a broader community building on the XRP Ledger. Learn more at xrpl.org and in GitHub project repositories.

Joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin continues its shocking ascent, now surpassing Ripple-affiliated XRP by market capitalization for the first time since 2014, according to CoinMarketCap data. Back then, both of them were below Nxt, Dash and Peercoin.

The meme coin logged yet another all-time high at 12:31 p.m. UTC, with its market cap swelling to a staggering $72 billion. To put things into perspective, the cryptocurrency, which originally began as a Bitcoin parody, is now bigger than Santander, Intercontinental Exchange and BMW.

At press time, Dogecoin occupies fourth place, its highest position ever, on CoinMarketCap.

It is now up nearly 16,000 percent in 2021, demolishing the returns of every other major cryptocurrency save for Binance Coin. Dogecoin is also the best-performing coin in the top 100 over the past 24 hours, rising by over 35 percent.

Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, reached a market capitalization of $320 billion on Thursday after ETH hit a record high of nearly $2,750.

Ethereum is now more valuable than the payment giant PayPal.

window.coinzilla_display = window.coinzilla_display || []; var c_display_preferences = {}; c_display_preferences.zone = "325fe079eb73cc7840"; c_display_preferences.width = "300"; c_display_preferences.height = "250"; coinzilla_display.push(c_display_preferences); According to the latest data by Coinmarketcap, Ethereum is up more than 12% in the last 7 days. The cryptocurrency has jumped about 3.1% in the last 24 hours. The latest surge in ETH prices came after a increase in retail and institutional demand for the Ethereum.

The total market capitalization of PayPal Holdings is currently around $318 billion, meaning that Ethereum has surpassed PayPal’s total market capitalization.

Binance Coin (BNB) and ETH rose significantly during the latest $200 billion crypto market recovery.

Cryptoanalytic company Santiment said on Twitter.

“The dormant ETHEREUM tokens are rapidly moving to justify another historical high, exceeding $2,750 today. With many new ETH addresses being created and inactive tokens cycling rapidly, this is the youngest average investment we’ve seen since July 2018″

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 28, 2021

Last week, the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract reached $9.1 billion in ETH. According to the latest data released by Etherscan, the ETH network upgrade deposit contract currently has more than 4.2 million ETH worth about $11.2 billion.

CoinShares, one of the leading digital asset managers, recently released its weekly digital asset fund inflows report and highlighted the significant growth in institutional inflows associated with ETH.

Last week, Ethereum investment products raised $34.5 million, as total inflows into ETH investment products reached $793 million since the beginning of this year.

The world’s second-most valuable digital currency is becoming popular with institutional investors, and several organizations around the world have started adding Ethereum to their balance sheets.

Mike Novogratz, whose Galaxy Digital cryptocurrency fund announced the purchase of the BitGo crypto custodian on Wednesday, has appeared on Bloomberg TV to share his take on the recent rally of Dogecoin.

Novogratz mentioned Elon Musk and Mark Cuban but stated that there is far more to the meme-coin surge than just those two influencers.

The main driver for the Dogecoin rally, according to the Galaxy Digital founder, is the retail funds of millennials and gen Z, who feel nihilistic about the current crisis in the global financial system and are seeking any suitable store of value.

For this reason, Novogratz said, equities are going up and real estate prices in some regions are surging, as are baseball cards and other collectibles (in which non-fungible tokens stand as a separate wave).

Fiat debasement has also pushed the price of Bitcoin up, from last October to now, as it reached an all-time high of $64,863 on April 14, according to CoinMarketCap. Now, DOGE is also rising, despite it being initially a joke and a Bitcoin parody.

Novo pointed out that the triggers that are making equities go up are also pushing cryptocurrencies to the North.

However, Novogratz believes that investing in DOGE is very dangerous since it can go down as easily as it is going up now.

This is due to the lack of development going on in the DOGE ecosystem and the total absence of institutional money going into Dogecoin, Novogratz reckons. "This is a retail frenzy," he emphasized.

The Digital Galaxy CEO calls DOGE a pure bet and mentioned that, earlier this week, his company released a detailed report on DOGE.

This fact and the fact that the community has managed to build an $80 billion market cap for this asset certainly shows "some sense of success" for DOGE.

He pointed out, however, that although DOGE is going up, along with BCH, ETC and LINK, the crypto industry is not a bubble. He expects, though, that the prices of these coins can go up and down easily.

Bloomberg TV host and podcaster Joe Weisenthal, who is a strong crypto opponent, believes that the majority of DOGE holders are not in a rush to sell their "riches" for a certain important reason.

Despite "sitting on unreal % gains," he tweeted, the actual gains in U.S. dollar equivalent are not so impressive since many have bought only $100 or $1,000 worth of Dogecoin.

So, a lot of holders are not tempted to sell their DOGE since the amount of dollars made on this rally is far from life-changing.

On April 29, Ethereum’s price (ETH) hit a new all-time high of almost $2,800 for the first time, as indicated by data from CoinGecko. With Ethereum charting new all-time highs, its cumulative market cap tops $321 billion for the first time.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has seen significant gains this week in comparison to the rest of the crypto assets.

With its current valuation of around $2,777, Ether’s total market capitalization now stands at $321 billion.

Ethereum (ETH) is now approaching the top 30 most valuable assets in the world following its latest price breakthrough. This indicates that the blockchain network is in the midst of a bull market.

With the ongoing gain, Ethereum is now the 32nd most valuable asset in the world, overtaking both the precious metal platinum and online payment giant PayPal, according to CompaniesMarketCap.com.

The blockchain network is now worth more than PayPal after touching the price mark of $2,800 and has even exceeded that of mined platinum.

The total market capitalization of PayPal is currently estimated at around $314 billion while that of mined Platinum stands at around $301 billion.

In terms of the overall market performance, Ethereum had a good price-performance this year. The leading altcoin and the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has gained over 360% since Jan. 1

Ethereum’s market dominance is also growing. The cryptocurrency now represents 15.1% of the overall market for digital assets. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) has seen its dominance fall below 50% and continues to hover just above $1 trillion.

Over the past 24 hours, 1.45 million Ethereum transactions were processed, while only 289,613 BTC transactions were confirmed.

Earlier this week, BTC’s median fee to get into the next block stood at around $14.31 per transaction, while ETH’s median fee is only $5.89 per send.

On the back of Ethereum’s strong bull market stands the growing decentralized finance, and optimism about forthcoming Ethereum Improvement Proposals, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other components.

For the past couple of days, Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has been showcasing a magnificent price trend against Bitcoin (BTC).

This positive trend and Bitcoin’s lethargic growth have drastically reduced the market dominance of the flagship digital currency.

Read Also: Vitalik Buterin donates about $600,000 in ETH and MKR towards India’s COVID-19 Relief

A couple of hours ago, Ethereum (ETH) hit a new price all-time high of $2,800 for the first time on the Bitstamp exchange.

According to CoinMarketCap, Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $2,751 at the time of press, with a market cap of $319.7 billion. This implies that Ethereum is now bigger than the payments giant PayPal in terms of market valuation.

Going by the data provided by CompaniesMarketCap, the total market capitalization of the payments giant currently stands at $314.52 billion. This indicates that the largest altcoin has just attained a significant milestone.

Ethereum is now on the verge of scoring its seventh month in the green following the 45% price increase recorded in April so far. Obviously, there is still a large room for ETH to keep experiencing a similar positive trend.

On the other hand, Bitcoin (BTC) continues to trend sideways as Ethereum prints new price milestones, which brings the market dominance of the first and largest cryptocurrency below 50%.

Read Also: Crypto Analyst Luke Martin Names Altcoins That Would Outperform Bitcoin (BTC) In 2021

American banking giant, JPMorgan, has averred that Ethereum should outperform Bitcoin in the long run since it’s capable of capturing a share of the emerging crypto-native economy.

JPMorgan noted:

“Bitcoin (BTC) is more of a crypto commodity than currency and competes with gold as a store of value, whereas ETH is the backbone of the crypto-native economy and therefore functions more as a medium of exchange.”

Nevertheless, the banking giant stated that the flagship cryptocurrency has managed to weather the decentralized finance (DeFi) boom, which took the advantage of the slow growth of the total value locked in various crypto projects.

According to JPMorgan, Ethereum’s spot market depth recovered faster from the recent selloff compared to Bitcoin (BTC).

Read Also: Ethereum Booms in Anticipation for the Launch of ETH Futures By CME Group

The banking giant also mentioned DeFi and other parts of the flourishing Ethereum economy as the driving force of the digital token in terms of price:

“In combination with the continued growth for DeFi and other components of the Ethereum-based economy, this suggests some technical but occasionally important bullish tailwinds versus bitcoin.”

In conclusion, the Ethereum community should remember that the EIP-1559 is coming, as it’s also expected to enhance the bullishness of the digital token ETH.

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Ether has recently reached an all-time high of $2750. This has increased its market value past that of PayPal Holdings.

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency, and it has recently made a historical record in the crypto market. The crypto recently hit a $2750 value, which pushed its market value to $320 billion. With this market cap, the cryptocurrency was able to set a higher valuation than PayPal Holdings.

According to the latest market valuations, Ethereum has increased by over 11% in the past week. In the past 24 hours, the crypto has also grown by around 3%. This significant price movement has been caused by increased demand for the currency by retail and institutional investors.

PayPal has a valuation of approximately $318 billion. This means that with the $320 billion valuation recorded when ETH was trading at $2750, the crypto is now ahead of PayPal. Since the recent $200 billion recovery of the crypto market, ETH and Binance Coin have come out on top in terms of performance.

The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract was launched last week, which led to $9 billion being staked in ETH. The current value of the network upgrade now has a total valuation of around $11 billion with over 4 million in ETH at stake.

CoinShares has recently released a report that shows a significant growth in institutional adoption for Ethereum. Products associated with the crypto have raised $34 million in the past week and $792 million since January 2021.

The latest price movement for Ethereum comes after the European Investment Bank announced plans to set up a digital bond on the Ethereum network. The sale for the two-year digital bond, which is valued at $121 million, will be spearheaded by Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, and Societe Generale.

However, the backing by big banks is not the only factor pushing Ethereum numbers. The increase in decentralized finance is also being attributed to the surge. Currently, the Ethereum mainnet has around 2 million DeFi users.

The other factor contributing to the positive performance is a reduction in the ETH being held on exchanges, showing that holders of this currency are not selling. ETH is being used in platforms such as DeFi, which currently has 11 million ETH with a valuation of around $29 billion.

Besides, there is also a lot of Twitter activity from Ethereum supporters, pushing the demand for the cryptocurrency.

There’s a celebration in the crypto streets as the world’s second-largest digital currency, Ethereum (ETH), surged past the record $2,800 mark on Thursday, stealing Bitcoin’s limelight as the world’s largest digital coin fell below 50% in the past week.

At the moment, Ethereum isn’t showing any signs of slippage as it continues to trade just below the $3,100 mark. If the math behind this is legit, then rejoice! Ethereum’s market cap has climbed way above $340 billion, and surpassing PayPal, Nestle, Disney, and P&G. Leading crypto exchange, Binance, celebrated the first leap above PayPal in a tweet.

— Binance (@binance) April 29, 2021

At the moment, experts and netizens believe that Ethereum is in “price discovery mode”, which somewhat suggests that traders are trying to understand what its current value should actually be. A few ‘wolves of all streets’ think the future is looking ripe.

Bitcoin Dominance dropping is a result of strong existing altcoin action, not a leading indicator.

That said, it does not look like the trend is likely to end soon.

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) April 29, 2021

Now, why is ETH behaving this way? In the words of a few bullish investors, Ethereum is surging high because of two reasons:

The way this looks, the projections don’t feel as off-putting as they would last year, the reason being that this year the crypto streets are boasting arithmetic statistics to prove their value.

If we look at other crypto offerings, most coins traded incredibly in the last 24 hours, because of Ethereum’s stellar showing in the face of economic uncertainty.

Bitcoin is down almost 16% from its all-time-high of almost $65,000 which was recorded earlier in April. Albeit the trends look shambolic, the coin has performed stunningly, climbing almost 90% since the year began.

For what it’s worth, Ethereum may be coming after Bitcoin, but it’s possible somewhere in the long run, probably when fiat cash ceases to exist.

Only time will tell.

Such transactions boost the liquidity in the Ripple network as more people gain access to buy into the fourth most valuable crypto.

XRP, the fourth most valuable crypto asset by market value, recently released about 1 billion XRP worth about $1.6 billion, from an escrow account.

Whale Alert, an advanced crypto tracker, tracked the massive transactions in real-time which occurred in two different 500 million XRP transactions worth about $1.6 billion, meant primarily for funding its operations and venture capital, with the rest kept back in the escrow accounts.

READ: Ripple takes back 800 million XRP

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 1, 2021

In simple terms, such transactions boost the liquidity in the Ripple network as more people gain access to buy into the fourth most valuable crypto.

READ: Ether on record high as European Investment Bank launches digital bond on Ethereum

Ripple (XRP) plays dual roles as a payment platform and a currency. The platform is an open-source platform that was created to allow quick and cheap transactions.

At the time of writing this report, XRP was trading at $1.59 on the FTX exchange with a daily trading volume of $13 billion. XRP is up 4.17% for the day. Its current market value stands 73 billion with a circulating supply of 45,404,028,640 XRP and a maximum supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP coins.

READ: Cardano flying on a record high amid top American singer’s buy

Unlike its major leading crypto (Ethereum and Bitcoin) which were never intended to be a payment system, Ripple has gained the attention of major global banks such as Standard Chartered and Barclays for international transactions worldwide.

For the week, XRP has seen a rise in value, a surge close to 40% as investors bet Ripple would settle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That being said, price patterns reveal XRP is still down about 52% from its record of $3.29 set on January 4, 2018.

Olumide Adesina is a France-born Nigerian. He is a Certified Investment Trader, with more than 15 years of working expertise in Investment trading. Message Olumide on Twitter @tokunboadesina. He is a Member of the Chartered Financial Analyst Society.

The fast-rising crypto was trading at below 60 cent posting losses of about 10% for the day on the FTX exchange.

The Crypto market is currently undergoing some form of price correction amid intensified profit-taking and fear of regulatory oversights, thereby pushing Dogecoin below the 60-cent price levels.

On the broader crypto market, for the day, about 171,444 traders were liquidated. The largest single liquidation order happened on Bybit-ETH valued at $5.98 million.

The fast-rising crypto was trading at below 60 cent posting losses of about 10% for the day on the FTX exchange, after trading near 70 cents some hours ago.

Consequently, market pundits argue that the crypto asset doesn’t have any real case use.

READ: Crypto crash: 3 major risks involved in investing in Crypto

“I worry that, once the enthusiasm rolls out, there are no developers on it, there are no institutions coming in. But it’s got this moniker of the people’s coin right now,” Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz said on Squawk Box.

Dark clouds seem to be building upon recent reports that the Crypto market is about to face a wave of regulatory oversights when Janet Yellen the custodian of the world’s most powerful economy stated that the United States is yet to have the needed framework to deal with a host of money laundering, terrorist financing, and consumer risk protection that crypto raises.

Also, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Gary Gensler advised U.S lawmakers on providing more regulatory oversight to the cryptoverse.

“Right now, the exchanges, trading in these crypto assets, do not have a regulatory framework either at the SEC or our sister agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,” said Gensler, who further added, “there’s not a market regulator around these crypto exchanges, and thus, there’s really no protection against fraud or manipulation.”

READ: Altcoins giving investors weekly returns of at least 100%

That being said, the crypto’s stellar performance over the past few months can’t be ignored as Dogecoin maximalists try to convince the world that crypto is a serious asset class with powerful billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban giving the Crypto asset endless support.

Crypto experts further anticipate that ongoing institutional interest will make it difficult to predict if the Doge bubble is ripe as they try to take advantage of its incredible bullish momentum, which could in turn, push the crypto value higher.

4 cryptos are outperforming Bitcoin by a long distance, having registered weekly gains of more than 100% at press time.

The world’s most popular crypto, Bitcoin is presently trading above the $55,000 price levels amid profit-taking seen across market spectrums that currently leaves the world’s flagship crypto with weekly gains of about just 3.71%.

Still, 4 cryptos are outperforming Bitcoin by a long distance, having registered weekly gains of at least more than 100% at the time of drafting this report.

The leader of the pack is Telcoin which rallied by 291% in the last 7 days. The fast-rising crypto is an Ethereum-based decentralized crypto created about 4 years ago in Singapore to be the bridge between blockchain, cryptos, and the telecom industry.

The crypto project was created solely to partner with leading American Telcom firms in curbing the obstacle that is prevalent between billing platforms and mobile money, by providing users with very fast, cheap remittances fees when compared to mobile money platforms.

READ: XRP surges by 150% in 7 days as Ripple posts early victories against SEC

The crypto asset is an ERC-20 token meaning it thrives on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Ethereum Classic comes in second with a weekly gain of 166%. The five-year-old crypto is a hard fork of Ethereum, solely designed as a smart contract network, with the capability of supporting decentralized applications. Its native token is ETC.

The crypto asset gained its relevance for preserving the integrity of the existing Ethereum blockchain after a major hacking event that led to millions of Ethers stolen.

OKB comes in third on the account that it rallied by 117% over the past week, OKB is a fast-rising altcoin that operates on the Ethereum blockchain. The crypto asset currently has a supply of 300,000,000 with 60,000,000 in circulation.

READ: Billions of dollars lost in Crypto market, as over 500,000 investors get wrecked

The utility crypto is issued by the OK Blockchain Foundation with the major objective of connecting prospective crypto projects to OKEx users as well as investors.

The fourth is Dogecoin with a weekly gain of 102% at press time. The popular crypto asset facilitates peer-to-peer digital transactions. This means you can send money online with much ease. It is usually referred to as “the internet currency.”

It is different from BTC’s proof-of-work protocol in many ways, one of which is the Scrypt technology. The fast-growing altcoin also has a block period of 1 minute, and the total supply is unlimited, meaning that there is no limit to the amount of Dogecoin that can be mined.

Ethereum, the world’s second-most valuable cryptocurrency is currently on a dream run as the price of ETH jumped above $3,000 on Monday, which is its highest level on record.

According to the latest data published by Coinmarketcap, Ethereum touched an all-time high of $3,100 on 3 May. The total market cap of ETH jumped above $350 billion today after a huge rally driven by retail and institutional investors.

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Ethereum is now more valuable than the Bank of America in terms of market cap. The world’s second-largest digital currency crossed the market cap of PayPal last week. As of writing, ETH is trading above $3,090 with a market cap of approximately $355 billion.

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Ethereum price saw a remarkable rally in 2021 as the cryptocurrency gained nearly 300% within the last 4 months, compared to a jump of 100% in the world’s largest digital currency Bitcoin. Additionally, ETH is attracting large institutional inflows. The cryptocurrency saw inflows of nearly $34 million during the 3rd week of April 2021.

The latest surge in the price of Ethereum has accelerated ETH’s whale activity. According to the latest data published by blockchain tracking and crypto analytics firm, Whale Alert, a crypto user moved 63,500 ETH worth approximately $188 million on 3 May at 00:39 UTC to an unknown wallet. The transaction was recorded on Etherescan. Ethereum whales have started moving the digital currency from cold wallets to cryptocurrency exchanges to take advantage of the latest price surge. A crypto whale transferred 10,000 Ethereum worth nearly $30 million from a crypto wallet to digital exchange, Huobi today. ETH’s on-chain activity has increased significantly due to the latest jump in its price.

Ethereum 2.0, the network upgrade of ETH, is playing a major role in ETH’s institutional adoption. The network upgrade of the world’s second-most valuable digital currency started its journey in December 2020 with the launch of Beacon Chain. According to Etherescan, more than 4.1 million ETH worth over $12 billion has been staked under the deposit contract of ETH 2.0.

Following another drop to $52,500, bitcoin reacted positively and regained $2,000 of value in the following hours. However, the asset continues to be outperformed by most alternative coins, and its dominance is down to 48%. Ethereum reached yet another ATH yesterday, while BNB spiked well above $600.

Most alternative coins have been on a roll lately, with Ethereum leading the pack. After dipping below $2,000 a few weeks back, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has been on a roll. ETH broke its previous all-time high and has marked several consecutive new ones. The latest came a few hours ago, as ether tapped $2,800.

Binance’s native crypto has also surged impressively in the past 24 hours. BNB is up by 8% and trades at $615. Polkadot (7%), Chainlink (5%), Litecoin (4%), and Cardano (1%) are also in the green.

Nevertheless, Ripple is the best performer from the larger-cap alts with a notable 15% increase in a day and 50% in the past week. As a result, XRP has neared $1.6.

Further gains come from Venus (34%), Huobi Token (27%), OKB (27%), KuCoin Token (17%), NEAR Protocol (12%), Polygon (10%), THORChain (10%), and PancakeSwap (10%).

Ultimately, the cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has jumped to above $2.1 trillion.

While the alternative coins are on a roll, bitcoin seems stuck at best. The primary cryptocurrency went to a weekly high at $56,500 a couple of days ago following rumors that Facebook might have bought some. However, as it became evident that the assumptions were wrong, BTC retraced almost immediately.

In the following hours, the bears continued putting pressure on the asset, which resulted in another drop to $52,500.

However, bitcoin bounced off at that point and added more than $2,000 of value. Consequently, BTC trades around $54,500 at the time of this writing.

This increase is not enough for bitcoin to protect its market dominance, though. The metric comparing BTC’s market capitalization with all other crypto assets is down to 48%. Just for comparison, it was over 72% at the start of 2021.

From the positive side, BTC’s market cap has reclaimed the $1 trillion mark.

S&P Global, the parent company of S&P Dow Jones Indices, has launched three cryptocurrency indices. One tracks the performance of bitcoin, another tracks the performance of ethereum, and the third measures the performance of both bitcoin and ether.

S&P Global, the parent company of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, launched “The S&P Digital Market Indices” on Monday.

The index series include the S&P Bitcoin Index, the S&P Ethereum Index, and the S&P Crypto Mega Cap Index. The ticker symbols for the three are SPBTC, SPETH, and SPCMC, respectively. The latter “measures the performance of bitcoin and ethereum,” the company detailed.

The company explained that “The indices aim to bring transparency to the emerging cryptocurrency market,” elaborating:

These indices are designed to measure the performance of a selection of digital assets (crypto assets) listed on recognized, open exchanges that meet minimum liquidity and market capitalization criteria.

The indices use Lukka Inc., a crypto data provider, as the data source for digital asset pricing and reference data, via the Lukka Prime and Lukka reference data products.

S&P Global says cryptocurrencies have become mainstream and appear to be here to stay, as more companies are offering crypto services and adoption is growing worldwide. Meanwhile, an S&P analyst believes that bitcoin’s rise is reminiscent of the U.S. gold rush.

What do you think about S&P launching crypto indices? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, surged Monday to a new record price of over $3,200 amid fresh speculation the network’s value might soar as more traders warm to the potential of decentralized finance, known as DeFi, and other uses like non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

The 10% gain was the biggest in two months, and the new all-time high price of $3,253 came just hours after the market topped $3,000 for the first time. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has risen for nine straight days, its longest winning streak since the bull market of late 2017 and early 2018. The ether price has quadrupled just this year alone, outperforming bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency, which has doubled.

Ether now has a market capitalization of $364 billion, exceeding that of Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank, as well as that of the entertainment giant Walt Disney and food conglomerate Nestle.

The latest price move comes amid signs of growing interest in ether from big institutional investors and Wall Street firms – similar to the dynamic that propelled bitcoin to a market capitalization over $1 trillion earlier this year.

Late last week, the Wall Street investment-research firm FundStrat predicted ether could surge to $10,000 this year, powered by enthusiasm over DeFi’s growth and advances in Internet-based financial applications.

“It used to be the other way around, but now Bitcoin is riding the coattails of Ethereum,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the brokerage Oanda, wrote Monday in an email.   

The daily transaction count has increased by 22% to 1.376 million this year, per data provided by Glassnode. The Ethereum network settled $1.5 million in transactions in the first quarter alone, more than the combined tally of the previous seven quarters.

“These applications are generating ~3x fees for the Ethereum network vs. Bitcoin, which trades at ~3x the market cap,” FundStrat’s David Grider wrote.

Even analysts for JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, have acknowledged the network’s promise – despite some predictions that the success of DeFi’s automated, blockchain-based trading and lending applications might eventually steal market share from traditional financial firms.

“In combination with the continued growth for DeFi and other components of the Ethereum-based economy, this suggests some technical but occasionally important bullish tailwinds versus bitcoin,” according to JPMorgan.

The network CoinMetrics data shows the number of active addresses recently climbed to a new all-time high of 771,000, surpassing the previous record of 739,000 set in November.

And according to DeFi Pulse, which tracks use of DeFi applications, the amount of collateral locked in decentralized trading, lending and insurance applications has climbed to $72 billion, a fourfold increase so far in 2021. The figure was less than $1 billion at the start of 2020.

The total market capitalization for DeFi recently topped $100 billion, with some of the most popular projects, like Uniswap and Compound, built on the Ethereum blockchain.

“Ether is one of the main beneficiaries in the wider explosion in the cryptocurrency market,” Nigel Green, chief executive officer of deVere Group, wrote in emailed comments. “The boom over recent months has been fueled by soaring interest from major institutional investors and growing recognition that borderless digital currencies are the future of money.”

Some traders are buying options to bet on further gains – including the prospect of a rally in the ether price to $5,000 by the end of May.

One catalyst might be the so-called Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559, or EIP 1559, which is designed to make transactions on the blockchain more efficient. But it could also counteract any inflation that comes from new supplies of the cryptocurrency being mined into existence.

The change, approved in March, is supposed to take effect in July as part of a network upgrade known as the London hard fork.

“Investors are just starting to digest the potential impact on the economics of Ethereum,” Martin Gaspar, a research analyst at CrossTower, said Monday on CoinDesk TV’s First Mover show.

Additional excitement comes from Ethereum’s planned “Eth 2.0” upgrade, which will transform the network from using the energy-hungry proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, similar to bitcoin’s, to a more capital-intensive proof-of-stake (PoS) system. A consensus mechanism is the system a blockchain uses to confirm transactions and assure network security.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin gave a presentation recently on the network’s development roadmap after its merge to proof-of-stake, including a long-awaited feature known as sharding that could boost transaction throughput and speed. Sharding will expand Ethereum’s capacity to process transactions by splitting its database into 64 new mini-blockchains, addressing network congestion.

High fees on the Ethereum blockchain has been a nagging source of complaints among users, spurring the growing use of rival blockchains such as Binance Smart Chain, which is affiliated with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume.

Cryptocurrency traders have bid up prices for Binance’s BNB token as well as digital assets associated with so-called Ethereum killers, include Solana and Polkadot.

Ether “is already years ahead of bitcoin in everything but price and fame,” according to deVere’s Green. “There’s a real sense that 2021 is the year for ether. Its time has come.”

XRP is no longer the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The coin, which just a few weeks ago was surpassed in market cap by Bitcoin and Ethereum, today slid to fifth place as an SEC lawsuit drives its price further into the ground.

Litecoin, a Bitcoin spinoff, is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. This isn't due to hype around Litecoin—the coin fell in price by 10% today to $121—but rather that XRP has fared even worse. XRP fell in price by a further 40% today, pegging its total losses since the SEC filed a lawsuit against XRP's creators at well over 60%.

Litecoin's market capitalization today stands at $8.2 billion; XRP's is $8.1. XRP's market cap would have to fall by a further $2.8 billion to fall behind Bitcoin Cash, another Bitcoin spinoff that comprises decentralization in favor of speed and cheap transactions, Bitcoin Cash's market cap is $2.8 billion.

XRP's price started to drop after Ripple spread news of the SEC lawsuit last Monday.

The suit, filed on Tuesday, alleges that Ripple has raised $1.3 billion worth of XRP in unregistered securities sales since 2013—and continues to do so. Ripple maintains a large amount of XRP in escrow wallets, which it sells periodically to manipulate the supply of XRP in circulation, a little like a central bank. The SEC alleges that such activities are illegal. The suit also named Ripple's co-founder Christian Larsen and incumbent CEO Brad Garlinghouse as defendants.

Ripple disputes the case. "We are right and will aggressively fight - and win - this battle in the courts to get clear rules of the road for the entire industry in the U.S. We are on the right side of the law, the right side of policy and will absolutely be on the right side of history," said Garlinghouse in a statement shared with Decrypt.

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

XRP’s market fell by $16B, or 63% since the news of the US SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs came on December 21.

The SEC alleged that Ripple Labs raised $1.3B in unregistered securities since 2013 through selling XRP to investors, including those who came from the US.

The lawsuit has made the price of the coin collapse after crypto exchanges suspended trading of the coin and crypto funds liquidated assets.

The Start of Misery

XRP has benefitted from Bitcoin’s bull run. Last Thursday, the coin was hovering at a price of $0.6 and a market cap of $27B. However, when Ripple spread the news of an imminent SEC lawsuit, everything turned into chaos.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Christian Larson said that the SEC was about to file a complaint against them that would say that they violated securities laws by selling XRP.

The coin dropped to $0.5 by the time the SEC filed its lawsuit the next day. As predicted, the complaint alleged that Ripple held illegal unregistered securities sales of XRP.

The complaint has a huge impact on the crypto industry. If the SEC can convince a judge that XRP carries an investment contract in the US law, it can sue crypto companies that trade with XRP or exchanges that facilitate the sale of the coin on the same grounds.

The price of XRP dropped quickly after the SEC’s announcement, it has been made worse when many crypto companies announced that they will cut ties with XRP or stop trading of the coin.

Beaxy was one of the first exchanges to delist the coin, then others followed afterward. On December 23, XRP’s price closed at $0.26 after Galaxy Digital, Jump Trading, Bitwise, Cross Tower, and OSL made similar announcements.

Fortunately, the price of XRP recovered to $0.31, but the news that Bitstamp will halt trades and deposits of XRP for the US customers in January descended the price of XRP once again, this time to $0.29.

London-based B2C2 was the next exchange to prevent US investors from trading XRP. The price of XRP fell to $0.28 after news broke of B2C2’s decision on December 27.

B2C2 was the next exchange that prevented US investors from trading XRP. The price fell to $0.28 after news broke of B2C2’s decision last December 27.

Ripple’s Hot Water

A huge blow was experienced last December 28, when two US crypto exchanges, OKCoin and Coinbase announced that they will suspend the trading of XRP.

After OKCoin announced its suspending XRP trading, Coinbase also announced that it would suspend trading of XRP for its US Customers effective on January 19.

As of now, XRP has a total market capitalization of $9B and trades at $0.19.

How long can this misery by XRP go? Who will be the next exchange to announce its stepping out of XRP? How low will the price of the coin collapse?