XRP, the native asset of the XRP ledger, established by the payment-focused blockchain company Ripple Lab, rose to as high as $0.437564 before slipping to $0.413853 at press time, touching the highest price point since July 2019, according to The CoinDesk 20. With a market value of over 33 percent in the last 24 hours, the third biggest cryptocurrency extending the year-to-date gain to 116%.
“Altcoins are high beta assets and usually move in the same direction as bitcoin, but more,” trader and analyst Alex Kruger tweeted on Friday. Alternative cryptocurrencies according to Kruger can be viewed as leveraged bitcoin plays. Bitcoin, the top market capitalisation crypto-currency, has held a steep rally in the last eight weeks, ranging from $10,000 to almost $19,000. Bitcoin is a little over 5 percent from reaching a new lifetime peak at the currency price of $ 18,736, while XRP is currently down about 89 percent from its record high of $ 3.84 reached in January 2018, according to Messari’s data source.
XRP and other altcoins which also increase in response to a U.S. suggested regulation. The Currency Comptroller’s Office will bar banks from blacklisting legal industries, including, possibly cryptocurrency companies. The proposed regulation is likely to welcome news to businesses that have long struggled to secure or retain bank accounts in the United States.