With exciting news and partnership announcements every day, Ripple seems to be a sensible choice for crypto investors – but despite all the positive stories surrounding XRP, its value does not seem to be increasing. What are the reasons for this?Despite all the technological applications of Ripple’s technology, something seems amiss. Large financial institutions are using xRapid, the payments facilitation tech developed by Ripple. South Korea’s Worii bank are testing the waters with Ripple XRP, and numerous payment providers including Fleetcor are also showing interest in the company – but market stagnation seems to be occurring. Regardless of how many partnerships Ripple announces, the price simply does not appear to be rising – and there’s a simple, yet frustrating reason for this.For most crypto traders, Bitcoin is still the go-to currency. Most of the money invested into alt coins generally makes its way into BTC, which can be catastrophic for the valuation of other coins. The best example is this: at the beginning of February, BTC was worth $6,172. As we roll into the second week of March, Bitcoin is now sitting pretty at $11,000 – that’s without many (if any) exciting announcements or partnerships. In comparison, Ripple began February at $0.59, ending the month on $0.91 – a reasonable increase, but one which pales in comparison to Bitcoin. Both currencies suffered monthly lows on the 6th February. Crucially, Bitcoin increased by about 80% with XRP managing to fight back with an increase of approximately 52% - but is this a sign of things to come in the long-term?Whenever the price of Bitcoin rises, it's only natural that some traders will get worried about the price of their alt coins and trade them for BTC. This isn’t a sign that these projects are becoming less worthy – instead, it’s a sign of increased confidence in Bitcoin. The smart money is on buying XRP low while it’s possible to, in the anticipation that all of Ripple’s hard work will eventually pay off.