On January 16, Ripple’s XRP neared its $3.4 ATH on Bitfinex, Kraken and Binance for the first time since January 2018.
Amid a rapid price surge (+16% over 24 hours), open interest in XRP futures hit a record $7.7bn.
At the time of writing, the asset trades around $3.32. Its market capitalisation is $190.9bn, according to CoinGecko. Over the week, the coin has gained nearly 45%.
The latest rally came as the SEC appealed a court ruling in the Ripple Labs case. The lawsuit has been ongoing since December 2020, when the regulator accused the company of selling $1.3bn of unregistered securities.
In July 2023 the court held that programmatic sales and other distributions of XRP did not constitute the offer and sale of investment contracts. However, that did not cover more than $700m of institutional purchases.
The SEC now intends to challenge its partial loss.
Investor concerns triggered by the appeal were outweighed by optimism about the policy climate for cryptocurrencies in the United States, argues Bitget Research chief analyst Ryan Lee. According to him, institutional adoption of the RippleNet payments network has also enhanced the asset’s market appeal.
“If regulatory uncertainty is removed, an inflow of institutional investors could further strengthen XRP’s position in the cryptocurrency market,” Lee added.
Earlier, Santiment analysts said that large-scale whale purchases were the main driver of the token’s rise.
In December 2024, Ripple received approval to launch trading in the RLUSD stablecoin.