In the past, major conferences have been the cause of a lot of buzz for cryptocurrencies, often leading them to surge in price as things are hashed out over a few days. This has been the case before for the XRP-focused Ripple conference, Swell, in the past.

However, this time around, with the 2019 iteration kicking off this week, there was certainly a small spike in price just before the doors opened – but when things did actually get going, the price of the third-largest cryptocurrency actually fell drastically.

While conferences are not directly correlated to a good performance of a certain coin, the fact that XRP’s price dropped as the Swell conference kicked off is noteworthy. Ripple has been a company under fire recently, with threats of an XRP fork, as well as outrage at alleged market manipulation from the controlling company.

Leading up to Swell’s opening in Singapore, the price of XRP climbed to $0.30, but failed to break a key resistance of $0.31. This then saw the coin come tumbling down to $0.28 at the time of the conference. It appears that the fall in price may have a lot more to do with technical analysis than any external factors.

All in all, the price of XRP is not concerning for those at Ripple, if their CEO Brad Garlinghouse is to be believed. Garlinghouse spoke with Bloomberg and described his views on altcoins, but also stated: “I don’t think about the price of XRP in the short term.”

Still, the news at Swell itself has been relatively positive for Ripple and its advancements. The company said that they had surpassed a key customer milestone of 300 clients, and also boasted 10x year-over-year growth in transactions on RippleNet, the global network of banks, financial institutions and payment providers that sends money globally and instantly for very little cost.

Ripple continues to be a cryptocurrency that divides opinions in the industry. It has ardent fans, especially on Twitter, but it also has many detractors who feel it is far too centralized. However, the company continues to make milestones and sit in the top echelons on the market cap of coins, so it will be interesting to see what other advancements and announcements come from Swell this year.