Bitcoin and major digital currencies were trading higher Friday, putting most coins on track for back-to-back winning weeks.

After trending lower for most of the week, bitcoin the world’s largest digital currency has jumped out of its recent short-term trading range, making a two-week high at $6,776.75. In Friday trading, a single bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.66% was last going for $6,714.53, up 5.3% since Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken Exchange.

Analysts at FX Pro said a number of material projects had generated optimism among crypto aficionado's. “A number of factors helped form this price [move higher],” wrote the analyst team. “Ripple’s CEO hints about the launch of a new product based on xRapid’s XRP coin as early as next month; access to the biggest Asian cash remittance market including India, Sri-Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, and fintech start-up also begins working in Africa.”

The broad-based rally added $25 billion to value of all cryptocurrencies Friday, which now stands at $227 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

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XRP bursts higher, overtakes Ether

XRP, the coin that runs on the Ripple protocol, exploded higher Friday, at one point trading 75% higher 75%. Buoyed by optimism around the xRapid product that hopes to improve cross-boarder payments for financial institutions, XRP hit an intraday high of 78 cents.

Read:XRP surges 75%, overtakes Ether as world’s second-biggest digital currency

The move saw the total value of XRP replace Ether as the second-largest digital currency. In late afternoon trading a single XRP XRPUSD, +0.35% coin was last going for 57 cents, up 41.1% on the day. Elsewhere, Ether ETHUSD, +0.66% was up 19.4% at $248.93, Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, -0.09% had added 19% at $509.00 and Litecoin LTCUSD, -0.48% was higher by 14.7% at $61.94.

In futures trading, the Cboe Global Markets Group Inc.’s October contract US:XBTV8 finished Friday up 5.1% at $6,727.50 and the CME Group Inc. September contract US:BTCU8 closed the session up 5.4% at $6,740.

SEC begins proceedings on ETF proposal

The Securities and Exchange Commission said late Thursday it had begun proceedings in its decision whether to approve a bitcoin-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF) tabled by VanEck and SolidX.

In an “Order Instituting Proceedings to Determine Whether to Approve or Disapprove a Proposed Rule Change,” SEC Secretary Brent Fields said: “Institution of proceedings does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions with respect to any of the issues involved. Rather, as described below, the Commission seeks and encourages interested persons to provide comments on the proposed rule change.”

On Aug. 7, the SEC said it planned on making a decision on the joint bid on Sept. 30.

The SEC added that it had received more than 1,400 comments on the application.

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