CRYPTO ENGINES AND PRICES
The top 15 altcoins outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) this weekend with the likes of Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin SV (BSV) and EOSIO (EOS) up more than 20 % in the last 7 days. An aggressive jump in ETH activity has pushed total cryptocurrency volumes to the highest levels we’ve seen in months.
Crypto Story of the Day
Ripple (XRP) had the best price performance of any coin in the top 10 this weekend and has re-established itself as the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Although there has been some news about a new smart contract solution for the protocol, the move comes after a multi-year period of underperformance for the token.
The XRP has increased by 100% in the last 7 days following the weekend activity. The move pushed the token’s market cap above that of Tether (USDt) for the first time since early September, regaining its third position. Trading increases XRP by + 160% for calendar year 2020, which is actually a better performance than Bitcoin (BTC) for the same period. However, from post-2017 lows, XRP has underperformed BTC by around 65% and remains at 70% from 2017 highs, where BTC is only around 15% from its all-time high.
Over the weekend, developers from XRPL Labs, an entity that develops solutions for the XRP network, released sample code for “Hooks”. The technology was first announced in October and has been described as facilitating the creation of smart contracts on the network. Hooks are set on top of existing XRP accounts or addresses and allow the creation of programmatic rules for the account to work. The code was introduced as a “technology preview” to demonstrate “what Hooks will be able to do and how they will work in general”. According to XRPL Labs, additional technical releases and details on development progress will be released prior to the launch of Hooks Testnet. The final launch date of a complete code for Hooks has not been disclosed.
XRP has one of the most fiercely loyal communities in all of cryptography. While high-profile projects like xRapid never delivered on their initial promise, supporters of XRP on Twitter and other forums have never been more ardent. We have stated that the trend in prices in 2017 XRP, where the token market capitalization has increased from less than $ 10 billion to over 150 billion in 3 weeks (before returning to 10 billion a year later), it is one of the most aggressive bubbles and crashes the world has ever seen. We can’t help but feel that roller coasters have done something to this community as they are willing to give XRP developers the benefit of the doubt on any announcement, regardless of past disappointments. XRP, despite being associated with the hugely successful Ripple payment network, has never found a meaningful use case. Apparently, the XRP community is anticipating that a smart contract solution, which seems incredibly overdue, will provide the utilization needed to bridge the valuation gap.
