Ripple’s XRP takes off like rocket—what’s fueling this rise?

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Ripple Labs’ XRP token has taken off like a rocket, although it’s anyone’s guess as to the who/what/why that’s furiously inflating XRP’s fiat price.

A month ago, a single XRP was worth around 50¢. That value doubled by mid-November and kept going, touching $1.50 by the end of the month. Then, over the weekend, XRP broke through the $2 barrier and currently sits at around $2.70. That’s still below its all-time high of $3.40 set seven years ago, but XRP has now leapfrogged both Solana’s SOL and Tether’s USDT stablecoin on the market cap charts.

So what happened? Of course, lots of tokens got a boost in mid-November following the election of Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. President. But much of that euphoria wore off not long after, and even the mighty BTC ran out of steam before cracking its psychological $100,000 barrier.

So, is it a renewed access thing? On November 13, the ‘crypto’ division of online brokerage Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) relisted XRP for its U.S. customers. But Robinhood also relisted SOL at the same time, and while SOL has since enjoyed some gains, it hasn’t taken off like XRP has.

Other observers claim XRP is being driven hard by “whales” at the U.S.-based Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange, where the XRP-USD pair accounted for well over one-fifth of all trading volume on December 2. The same pair accounted for nearly one-fifth of volume at the similarly U.S.-based Kraken. Internationally, the XRP-USDT pair was tops at Binance on December 2 with 12% of trading volume.

Robinhood and other U.S. exchanges delisted XRP in 2020 after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began its long legal fight with Ripple Labs over whether XRP is an unregistered security. But Coinbase and Kraken relisted XRP over a year ago, and Binance never kicked XRP to the curb, so…

In August, Ripple won a partial victory in its dustup with the SEC, but that verdict did little to light a fire under XRP’s price, partly because the SEC appealed the part of the verdict that it lost.

Current SEC chair Gary Gensler confirmed last week that he’d be stepping down once Trump takes his second oath of office in January. So, are XRP fans just having a ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ moment, or do they anticipate a new SEC chair will end Ripple’s long legal nightmare once and for all?

Then there’s anticipation that the SEC might approve spot-based XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs), much as it did earlier this year for BTC and Ethereum’s ETH token. Those ETFs have seen massive inflows of capital since their launch (although much of the initial surge came from investors fleeing Grayscale Investments’ GBTC trust, which before its conversion to an ETF had drastically limited its customers’ ability to withdraw their funds).

On December 2, WisdomTree filed its XRP ETF application with the SEC, joining Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital in the queue. So, there definitely appears to be faith that the SEC, under a new chair, will lose a lot of its XRP baggage.

There are also reports that Ripple’s previously announced plans to enter the stablecoin market could soon win U.S. regulatory approval. On November 29, Fox Business reported that the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) could approve the Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin to launch as early as December 4.

The dollar-denominated RLUSD will be issued through Standard Custody & Trust Company, a NYDFS-licensed firm Ripple acquired in June and is slated to be issued on both Ethereum and Ripple’s own XRP Ledger. An ‘X’ account set up to monitor RLUSD’s ‘beta testing’ reported multiple mints worth tens of millions of dollars on December 2.

We can’t help but recall that, around the time that Ripple first announced its stablecoin plans, CEO Brad Garlinghouse took some shots at the reigning stablecoin king, saying it was “clear” to him that the “U.S. government is going after Tether” due to its reputation as a ‘crime coin.’

Given recent reports that both the Justice and Treasury departments are preparing charges against Tether, could Garlinghouse know something the guys at Tether don’t know? At least, not yet?

Or is it just XRP’s turn to be the hot chick at the crypto casino? As with all things ‘crypto,’ so long as ‘number go up,’ few care to ask why. They just slap their money on whichever roulette number every other sucker is betting on and let ‘er rip(ple). So, enjoy the rocket ride; just be prepared for the moment when this bubble experiences a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

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