Read U.Today's top three news stories to learn what is happening in the world of crypto.

XRP on verge of biggest breakout in price history

As can be seen from the chart provided by TradingView, Ripple-affiliated token XRP seems to be gearing up for the biggest breakout in its price history. On the chart, one can see a symmetrical bullish triangle pattern that has formed over the past six years of XRP's price performance; two converging trend lines met at the apex as a result of the price showing lower highs and higher lows. The pattern usually indicates that the price may break out in the direction of the existing trend, which is up, if we are still following the 2018 case (as a reminder, in 2017-2018, during the 315-day rally, the price of XRP surged by astonishing 60,000%). This suggests that once the breakout occurs, the bullish momentum for XRP will continue. Based on the XRP price chart, not much remains until the pattern is completed. However, the end has not arrived this year, and it most likely will not arrive in the first half of 2025 either.

Shibarium close to breaking another major milestone

Shiba Inu’s layer-2 solution, Shibarium, is set to achieve a major milestone. Data from Shibariumscan indicates that after about a year since its launch, the total number of blocks on Shibarium has reached 6,398,912. With this new record, Shibarium is moving closer to the 6.5 million milestone, which is an important step for the layer-2 solution. In the meantime, the network's total transactions have surged to 418,989,504, with wallet addresses totaling 1,812,422. Besides, Shibarium witnessed significant developments last week. As reported by U.Today, Shibarium now has a burn portal for removing excess SHIB tokens from circulation. Another recent advancement for the layer-2 solution is the introduction of on-ramp features for BONE tokens with Visa and Mastercard.

Bitcoin risk-off asset, but Samson Mow clarifies crucial nuance

JAN3 CEO and prominent Bitcoin maximalist Samson has recently taken to the X platform to explain why Bitcoin is a risk-off asset and for what groups of market participants it is, in particular. According to Mow, there are four types of investors for whom the flagship crypto is unquestionably a less risky investment than other ones. Those investors are people who have low time preference, they understand money, they may suffer from inflation and/or they live in countries with oppressive governments. However, these four factors do not necessarily have to come together for one person. Apart from the aforementioned X post, Mow also published another one, in which he stated that one should not underestimate the ability of “the plebs” (as he calls average retail investors) to absorb the Bitcoin supply circulating on the market.