XRP has seen a solid performance this week, rising for two consecutive days and reaching its highest level since Aug. 9.
Ripple (XRP) climbed to $0.60, marking an almost 60% recovery from its crypto Black Monday low of $0.3817. This rebound makes XRP the best-performing top ten cryptocurrency since the market crash in early August.
Some analysts are optimistic about XRP’s future prospects. In a post on X, JackTheRippler highlighted a technical chart showing Ripple’s historical price action and suggested that the token could “explode like a volcano” if history repeats itself.
— JackTheRippler ©️ (@RippleXrpie) August 20, 2024#XRP will explode like a volcano. If history repeats itself, which has always happened in the crypto space, we could see a 60,000% pump!
Brace yourselves… pic.twitter.com/IszcP7L8UG
Another technical analyst, JD, pointed out that XRP had formed a golden cross, a technical pattern often associated with large gains. This cross, which occurs when an asset’s 50-day and 200-day moving averages intersect, appeared on Ripple’s chart on Aug. 6.
Ripple’s SEC ruling and RLUSD stablecoin launch
Ripple Labs recently secured a favorable outcome in its long-running legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Judge Analisa Torres ordered the company to pay a $125 million fine, significantly less than the $2 billion the SEC had sought.
This ruling could pave the way for companies like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity to file for a spot Ripple ETF. Such an ETF would be notable, given that the SEC recently rejected applications for Solana (SOL) ETFs, citing security concerns.
A Ripple ETF could make sense, as XRP is the seventh-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $33 billion and trading volumes exceeding $1.4 billion. Unlike Ethereum (ETH), Ripple does not offer staking, meaning that investors would only lose the expense ratio.
However, Ripple’s long-term performance has been lackluster, with the coin still 70% below its all-time high of $1.96, potentially making it less attractive to ETF issuers. Additionally, the XRP Ledger has shown limited traction among developers, with only $275,000 in assets.
XRP bulls are also looking forward to the upcoming RLUSD stablecoin, which is currently in beta testing. RLUSD will be a regulated stablecoin pegged to the US dollar on a 1:1 basis.
The risk here is that the stablecoin may not gain traction because of Tether’s (USDT) dominance. For example, PayPal’s PYUSD and Tron’s USDD have only $746 million and $871 million in market cap, showing how difficult it is to gain market share.
XRP could further benefit from macroeconomic factors, such as the anticipated Federal Reserve rate cut and the ongoing decline of the US dollar. The US dollar index has fallen to 101.7 from its year-to-date high of 106, a trend that typically bodes well for risky assets like cryptocurrencies.