XRP is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency after a $100 billion surge following the election

Topline

The XRP token, linked to Ripple Labs, has become the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, following a weeks-long rally sparked by President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in November and recent speculation about the SEC’s potential the legal proceedings against Ripple will be discontinued.

The XRP token linked to Ripple briefly became the third most valuable cryptocurrency in the world … (+) Monday.

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Important facts

The price of XRP rose to over $2.50 early Monday before falling slightly to $2.30 – a 21% increase in the last 24 hours and a nearly 50% increase compared to the last Week.

Since Trump’s election victory, XRP’s market capitalization has risen from around $30 billion to $131 billion as of Monday.

XRP’s market cap surpassed $100 billion over the weekend for the first time since 2018, overtaking Solana’s SOL to become the world’s fourth most valuable cryptocurrency.

XRP also briefly overtook Tether’s USDT stablecoin market value early Monday before settling slightly lower.

Bitcoin, valued at around $100,000 last week, remains the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency with a market cap of nearly $1.89 trillion, followed by the Ether token with a market cap of $436 billion.

What fueled the Xrp surge this weekend?

While the price of XRP has been steadily rising since Election Day, the price spike over the weekend came after Fox Business reported that the New York Department of Financial Services could soon approve the launch of Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD. According to the report, the company may be preparing to launch RLUSD as early as December 4th.

News Peg

Ripple Labs, which developed the XRP payment protocol and uses the token for its payments platform, was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020. The agency accused the company of selling XRP tokens without registering them as security. In July last year, the regulator was dealt a blow after a federal judge ruled that Ripple did not violate securities laws by selling the token on public exchanges. In October of this year, the SEC appealed the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. However, Trump’s election victory and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s announcement that he would resign in January have sparked speculation about the Ripple case. Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said in a conversation with Fox Business last week that he believes the SEC should drop the case against Ripple. Giancarlo is one of the top contenders to become “crypto czar” in the new Trump administration.

What you should pay attention to

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a post last week on the Aisle through Fairshake PAC.”

Important background

The post-election surge in cryptocurrencies was driven by expectations of a more crypto-friendly regulatory environment under the Trump and GOP-controlled Congress. During his campaign, the president-elect took a pro-crypto stance and promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet.” This was a major political shift from his previous stance when he called Bitcoin a “fraud” and an impending disaster.

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