After Ripple Labs’ partial victory before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 13, Ripple has now overtaken Bitcoin to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market valuation. Within hours following the decision, the market capitalization of XRP increased by a staggering $21.2 billion to hit a new yearly high of $46.1 billion, moving it up from seventh place and surpassing Circle’s USD Coin and Binance’s BNB token in the process. Presently, the market capitalization of Ripple is $42.5 billion.
The significant increase in price for XRP followed the District Court for the Southern District of New York’s ruling that, in a lawsuit involving Ripple Labs and the SEC, the “offer and sale of XRP on digital asset exchanges did not amount to offers and sales of investment contracts.”
Similarly, according to statistics from TradingView, the price of XRP increased by as much as 98% in the hours following the ruling, peaking at $0.93. Due to a “simply unprecedented” surge in volume, the apparent rush to buy XRP even briefly caused the U.S. crypto exchange Uphold to go down.
Yes, we crashed, but no platform could handle the 50x increase in volume we experienced today. According to reports, Uphold was one of the few larger U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges that kept selling XRP while others decided to delist.
A new wave of re-listing activity from well-known U.S. exchanges has also been prompted by the latest decision, with Coinbase, Kraken, and iTrustCapital all making the token tradeable on their respective platforms. Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange owned by the Winklevoss twins, has made hints that it too plans to list XRP again soon.
