The markets are all red this morning and our beloved Ripple (XRP) has not been left behind. XRP is currently trading at $0.787 at the moment of writing this. This is a drop of 6% in the last 24 hours and down 17.3% from recent highs of $0.9642 early on yesterday, April 25th.

Ripple price forecast indicate that the coin might be headed towards some choppy waters. The Fibonacci Retracements indicate that there might be a new low at $0.70 and possibly $0.65. On the other hand, XRP might bounce back to levels above or equal to $0.85.

However, there is some good news for Ripple. According to the XRP market reports for the first quarter of 2018, the overall market volume of XRP has grown significantly compared to its share in the fourth quarter of last year.

The said report tells us that the overall market volume of XRP, that is currently 6.9 percent of the total, has grown 1.6 percentage points from the 5.3% market share volume of late 2017. When taking into consideration the overall market share of Ripple for 2017 that stood at 5%, this leap in volume is an increase of 1.9 percentage points.

However, using current market values, XRP’s crypto market share is actually at 8% it has increased a further 1% since the report.

So what could be leading to the rise in dominance of XRP in the markets?

The most obvious explanations is the added liquidity of the coin in the markets through additional listings on Abra and Uphold this year. This brought the total number of official exchanges trading XRP to 60. However, coinmarketcap puts this number to almost 3 times that at 140 exchanges.

What does this mean for the overall Crypto-markets?

What is probably happening is a redistribution of volume away from Bitcoin (BTC) as more cryptocurrency coins and tokens emerge in the markets. This in turn diverts the focus away from the volatile King of Crypto and makes it possible for XRP to look more attractive to traders seeking a more stable alternative in the crypto markets.

Will XRP moon soon?

The mood amongst HODLers and traders is that XRP is destined for great things and even to levels of trading at $10 by the end of the year. Some have put XRP at an amazing $24.48 by December this year.

All these are wonderful and exciting predictions. Time is the only factor to consider for an XRP moon landing.