By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
Over the past week, XRP has been on a continuous rise like Bitcoin and Ethereum. With a market cap of over $12 billion, XRP is currently trading at $0.27.
As the number of XRP whales rises, PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) revealed its reason for not supporting the coin on its new crypto service. In partnership with Paxos Trust Company, PayPal said the joint venture followed the regulations laid down by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Over the past week, XRP has been on a continuous rise like Bitcoin and Ethereum. With a market cap of over $12 billion, XRP is currently trading at $0.27.
Data by Santiment showed that as XRP increases, the number of XRP whales also increased in the past week.
$XRP has had an impressive +8.4% week, and it's currently the #1 rising asset in discussion rate on #crypto platforms. The rise of holders with coins containing large amounts of $XRP has been very apparent, as addresses with 10-1M tokens are at new ATH's. https://t.co/IMGAtsz2hf pic.twitter.com/n9X3nHRVDj
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) November 15, 2020
XRP Rises Despite Not Being Supported by PayPal
A CryptoNewsFlash report highlighted that the number of XRP whales had reached an all-time high. XRP holders with over 1 million tokens have climbed an ATH of 17,625. Also, there are now over 10 million XRP in 307 whales.
Furthermore, XRP addresses between 100 and 1,000 XRP also hit an all-time high. Specifically, CryptoNewsFlash stated that the addresses are 332,560.
Following PayPal’s announcement to support specific cryptocurrencies, the crypto market recorded gains. Most significantly is the upward trend in Bitcoin’s price, which is one of the four digital assets supported by PayPal. Recently, the king coin hit $16,000 for the first time since 2017 and climbed over $300 billion in its market value.
Apart from Bitcoin, PayPal also announced its support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ethereum (ETH). This has generated a lot of reactions from the crypto community about why PayPal did not include XRP on the list.
On the 13th of November, Paxos CEO and cofounder Chad Cascarilla talked about the company’s decision to support certain digital assets. In an interview with Laura Shin of Unconfirmed, Cascarilla attributed the decision to the SEC regulations. He said:
“Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash as a result, Litecoin, which are very similar, and Ethereum have essentially been grandfathered in by the SEC, Bitcoin explicitly and Ethereum explicitly. And once you start getting away from these top four, there are always a little bit of questions around them. Not just for us, but for the industry in general. So that’s something we need to be sensitive about.”
As central banks globally work towards creating central bank digital currencies (CBDC), Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse believes XRP could be a bridge asset for cross border transactions. During an interview with The Scoop podcast, Garlinghouse said:
“The whole point of XRP in our context is to be a bridge asset… The point is to enable a lot of efficiency and liquidity between XRP and the US dollar, and XRP and the Australian dollar.”
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