Take a look at what's happening in the world of crypto by reading U.Today’s top three news stories.

Ripple Labs hits rare win in payments technology

In a recent post on its official X handle, Ripple announced that it has become the winner of the 2024 FinTech Breakthrough Award. As revealed in the post, the company was awarded in two categories: Best Cross-Border Payments Platform and Best DeFi Infrastructure Platform. The recognition as Best Cross-Border Payments Platform is of great importance to Ripple, elevating it to the top of innovative solutions in the B2B Payments sector. Other notable winners in this category were Corpay for Best B2B Payment Platform and Papaya Global for Best B2B Payment Product. Despite the exceptional nature of this achievement, it did not manage to boost the price of XRP, the Ripple-affiliated token. At press time, XRP remains relatively low, trading at $0.595, per CoinMarketCap.

ETH whales cashing out massively amid Ethereum price drop

As the crypto market is experiencing volatility, Ethereum large holders, or whales, cashed out millions prior to ETH's price going south. Data provided by Spot on Chain demonstrates that in the past four days, three smart Ethereum traders have sold 26,946 ETH worth $95.7 million. Together, they have made $39 million in profits. These moves occur amid the ETH price's fall by over 11% since the week's beginning. After reaching a two-year high of $4,093 last week, Ethereum saw a large sell-off, which caused its price to drop to $3,200 per ETH. As reported by CoinGlass, within the previous 24 hours, traders liquidated positions totaling $120 million, with 85% of them being long positions, indicating a wave of sell-offs and profit-taking among investors. The increasing cash-outs by ETH whales during the price decline causes concern regarding the future trajectory of Ethereum and the broader crypto market.

XRP triggers 125% volume surge amid market crash

Despite the tumultuous conditions the crypto market is currently going through, XRP has ignited a 125% increase in trading volume. Per data provided by CoinMarketCap, yesterday, XRP showed 138% growth in 24-hour trading volumes, totalling $3.96 billion. The surge in XRP trading volume emerged during a critical time for a crypto market marked by steep drops in the value of the major digital assets, drawing the attention of both investors and analysts. There are several factors that could have caused the spike in XRP's volume, however, the exact reason remains unknown. First, it could be investors taking advantage of lower prices in anticipation of a possible recovery. Second, the increased activity may indicate a resurgence of interest in XRP, even though the general market is experiencing a crash.