Ripple News:

On Tuesday morning, Ripple extended its gains against Bitcoin without posting much of an overall rise in the Ripple to USD exchange rate. Investors are understandably puzzled as to what this says about the Ripple price prediction for 2018.

Let’s take a closer look…

XRP rose 3.15% against Bitcoin on Tuesday morning, making it the second straight day of gains flowing to altcoin. However, the currency only appreciated 0.88% against the U.S. dollar.

Why the discrepancy? Ripple’s trading volumes have the answer…




XRP trading volumes registered a 118% increase from Sunday to Monday, rising to $102.2 million from $49.96 million. That surge came mostly from Korean and Bitcoin exchanges, which explains why the price is less ascendant in terms of USD.

Bithumb, a Korean exchange, accounted for 38% of total trading volume. Meanwhile, Poloniex was a distant runner-up at 13.18%. Considering that it offers XRP/BTC trades, we don’t have to look far to see that some investors are selling Bitcoins into XRP.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go before Ripple regains its former highs.

A handful of investors selling BTC to XRP simply won’t do it—it is not a big enough catalyst. Or rather, it is not a big enough catalyst when Bitcoin dominance is above 60%.

Having that much of the cryptocurrency market cap in Bitcoin is just silly. The only reason it happened is because Bitcoin is being added to the CME derivatives market. Put another way, Wall Street was given the green light to start trading Bitcoin.

Investors took that news and ran with it, rotating funds in from altcoins and fiat alike.

But what happens when CME expands its derivatives coverage to altcoins like ETH, LTC, and XRP? I imagine that would lead to soaring prices for those currencies as well.

After all, “client demand” forced CME to add Bitcoin, and if those traders make money on BTC futures, they’ll likely demand other cryptocurrency derivatives as well.

It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that a reverse-rotation will take place, whereby money will flow from Bitcoin to altcoins like Ripple.

This outward rotation might be hastened by other factors as well, including the upcoming Bitcoin hard fork. Contention over the SegWit2x scaling proposal is threatening civil war in the Bitcoin community. If that dispute isn’t resolved, we could see uncertainty and fear spike over BTC.

It’s just a preliminary guess, but this could also start a run on BTC…

Daily Ripple Chart

Analyst Take:

There is considerable evidence that Ripple won’t be stuck at around $0.208834 for much longer. It’s already making gains against Bitcoin, which could buoy fiat-to-XRP inflows as well. We will continue to monitor the situation and report any changes to our Ripple price prediction.

Also Read: Ripple Price Predictions 2017: XRP Price Could Cross $1 Mark by End of Year