XRP's Massive Week: Nearly All-Time High Price, ETF Optimism, and SEC vs. Ripple

From decrypt by Logan Hitchcock

XRP. Image: Shutterstock

The excitement surrounding Ripple and  XRP  has been growing since Donald Trump became President-elect in November, signaling a potentially favorable administration for crypto assets.

That excitement crescendoed last week as XRP came within pennies of breaking its all-time high price record from 2018, pushing Ripple’s stash of the asset to a staggering sum amid other notable happenings around the crypto company.

Here’s what you need to know from a wild week for Ripple and XRP.

XRP nears all-time high

XRP traded around $0.50 in the days leading up to the U.S. elections in November. Since that time the token has grown by more than 500% to a current price of $3.15, all while becoming the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, overtaking stablecoin Tether in the process.

Thanks to the surge, the token nearly set a new all-time high, peaking at $3.38 on January 16, just $0.02 shy of its  all-time high  of $3.40 set in 2018 per data from CoinGecko.

Up more than 25% on the week as of this writing, XRP has greatly outperformed its major crypto peers like  Bitcoin  and  Ethereum —though  Solana  is now showing much larger weekly gains thanks to momentum around  Trump’s official meme coin launch .

ETF optimism grows

Some of the demand for XRP can be attributed to the growing optimism about an approval of an XRP ETF. Last week, a report from researchers at  JP Morgan indicated  that if approved, an XRP ETF could expect to pull in billions of dollars from investors.

  This report piggybacks on recent comments from Ripple Labs president Monica Long, who suggested that she thinks an XRP ETF will be approved  “very soon .”

Ripple’s holdings skyrocket

The major price appreciation in XRP has bolstered Ripple’s holdings tremendously, increasing by about  $115 billion  since election day at the current price

Based on its most recent financial disclosures, the firm holds around 4.44 billion XRP, and controls another 39 billion XRP in escrow—a collective amount now worth $136 billion at the token’s current price. At the time of the election, this amount was worth approximately $21 billion.

During the election, Ripple and other notable crypto firms like Coinbase  helped spearhead  a $300 million super PAC in an attempt to improve the regulatory environment for crypto in the United States. So far, that bet appears to be paying off handsomely.

Meme coins surge

After a  brief spike  in early December, meme coin activity on the XRP Ledger had largely gone silent until activity soared once more last week.

The activity was led by ARMY, a meme coin based on the  enthusiastic supporters  of the Ripple-linked asset, which jumped to a new all-time high around a $107 million market cap. Though the token has since pulled back to around a $67 million market cap, it still leads other XRP meme coins in trading volume, which has grown when compared to the December rush.

Thanks in part to the meme coin trading activity, the XRP Ledger saw its highest mark of active accounts since December 6,  breaching 63,000  on January 16 according to data from XRP Scan.

SEC not giving up

Though a more friendly regulatory environment might be around the corner, the current SEC administration is not yielding in its lengthy battle with Ripple.

This week, Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty noted that despite asking for the SEC to postpone its opening brief in an appeal against a ruling that favored Ripple, the enforcement agency  refused . On Wednesday, the SEC  filed the brief , asking the court for a reclassification of the security status of XRP.