Ripple (XRP) has now faced a strong rejection at the $0.39 resistance. At the beginning of this week, XRP/USD was expected to test the resistance at $0.40 again before correcting short term. However, the price action was not strong enough for the bulls to have sustained a rally towards $0.40. Even during the recent market meltdown when everything was bleeding red, Ripple (XRP) made an attempt to break past $0.40 but it failed, twice. The price retraced shortly after that but it has yet to test the $0.33 level again. The probability of Ripple (XRP) making a new low for the year at this point remains low as the market is preparing for a reversal.

Even though Ripple (XRP) may lag behind the rest of the market for a while but it is not likely to plunge into new lows. The interest in Ripple (XRP) is unlike anything we have seen in this market before. The sort of interest in Ripple (XRP) exceeds the interest in Bitcoin (BTC) in terms of loyalty, faith and belief in its long term potential. Ripple (XRP) has done this well despite it being on major exchanges like Coinbase. If Ripple (XRP) had been listed on Coinbase, I think it had a serious shot at becoming the largest coin by market cap even it was short lived. A lot of big exchanges have their reasons not to add Ripple (XRP) but those that have listed it have found it to be good business. Recently, Skrill, a leading payment services provider added Ripple (XRP) to its platform.

Ripple (XRP) has seen good news and bad news just like the rest of the market, but this is not about news. It is about reach. A lot of people see Ripple (XRP) as a direct alternative to fiat currencies. This is not the case with Bitcoin (BTC). Let’s say you have $1,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) in your wallet. You cannot spend it as conveniently as $1000 worth of XRP. That is because with Bitcoin (BTC) you will have to pay high transaction fees and wait for a long time before your payment is confirmed. With Ripple (XRP), everything happens instantaneously. So, the growing interest in Ripple (XRP) makes sense because people are now beyond the stage where they just look at concepts; now they want to see use cases and actual utility of different coins.

Ripple (XRP) is not in a good spot against Bitcoin (BTC). All the technicals for XRP/BTC point to a major correction against Bitcoin (BTC). This means while the rest of the market moves with Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP) will now be lagging behind because it made a lot of independent moves during the bloodbath. This will result in a temporary lack of interest in Ripple (XRP) as investors see most other coins rising while Ripple (XRP) lags behind. However, smart money is likely to be accumulating the whole time even as Ripple (XRP) continues to remain range bound for the foreseeable future.