The biggest beneficiary of President-elect Trump’s pro-cryptocurrency pledges is one of the oldest and most controversial names in cryptocurrency: the digital currency known as XRP. Cryptocurrencies have soared 370% since the election, with Bitcoin up 46% and the broader crypto market up 93%, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index. During that rally, XRP surpassed Solana to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. “XRP has been the asset with the most regulatory headwinds in Peloton,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC. “So if we move to regulatory tailwinds, almost by definition, it should benefit the most…and that seems to be the one A rational response.” The latest development marks a victory for XRP’s most vocal supporters, who have remained loyal for years even during Ripple’s battle with the SEC. Created 12 Years Ago XRP was created in 2012 by the founders of Ripple. holder. The battle with the SEC ended last summer when a judge said XRP was not a security when sold on an exchange to retail investors, but would be an unregistered securities offering if sold to institutional investors. Bitwise, WisdomTree and 21Shares have applied to issue XRP exchange-traded funds, and XRP has now become the third largest asset in the CoinDesk 20 Index after Bitcoin and Ethereum. But it’s unclear how or why Ripple could go any further. Alex Thorn, director of research at Galaxy Digital, said: “I have never been a big fan of XRP as an asset.” He called today’s XRP nothing more than “a blast from the past.” “Despite heavy marketing, it never really had clear product-market fit,” he added. “Overall, it has pretty low traffic and is trading at a much higher price than some of the larger players.” But now, regardless of the practical difficulties XRP faces, the cryptocurrency market is “looking for ways to express optimism about the new administration.” , Thorn said. ‘Divisive’ asset Hougan described XRP as a “pretty divisive” asset in the market, but defended its resilience and ability to “maintain community interest” during cryptocurrency boom and bust cycles. He said that compared with Bitcoin’s proof-of-work or Ethereum’s proof-of-state ecosystem, it has a “unique and differentiated” consensus mechanism that is cheap to operate and has been successfully maintained for many years. He added that a criticism of XRP is that investors haven’t seen its real-world use cases take off. “It stands to reason that for a primarily (business-to-business) style of blockchain, it’s difficult to develop business use cases when you have regulatory Damocles hanging over your head,” Hougan said. “But now that it has been removed, we can see that this working blockchain, which has an actively engaged community, has a strong foundation associated with it, and has a unique, very cheap to maintain consensus mechanism, can What to do in the business world”. “The technology works and functions at a low base cost,” Hougan added. “The core of the investment thesis is that we don’t yet know what it can do in an unconstrained environment, and that’s what we’ll find out over the next year or two.” A Ripple spokesperson declined to comment.
