Source: iStock/gopixa

XRP, the digital token affiliated with the San Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple, has been rather disappointing for investors this past week, as it remains in the red for the week while most other coins are seeing gains.

As of pixel time (13:04 UTC), XRP trades at c. USD 0.233 and is up by 1.2% in a day, trimming its weekly losses to 1.4%. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and bitcoin cash (BCH), by comparison, are up by 4%, 2% , and 7%, respectively, in the past week. However, XRP is still up by almost 20% in a month.

XRP price chart:

Source: coinpaprika.com

Although explanations for the recent price moves vary, one analyst believes that chart analysis can explain part of the lackluster performance, saying that XRP “needs to push up soon or we could see another low incoming.”

Ripple is just getting painful to look at when many other majors and #bitcoin itself is breaking out. — Jacob Canfield (@JacobCanfield)

In the chart, Jacob Canfield, a popular TradingView analyst, showed that the XRP/BTC pair right now is trading in a descending triangle, with a break-out being imminent.

While descending triangles like the one seen in the chart above may lead to both higher and lower moves, they are generally considered a continuation pattern. And in this case, a continuation would mean that even lower prices should be expected ahead, relative to bitcoin.

Meanwhile, however, other users in the same Twitter thread argued that it is nothing new that XRP lags behind other major coins, with one person saying that “Ripple has a history of being behind, yet when it runs it runs extremely hard and more than makes up for its past lagging.”

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According to Binance Research, in the fourth quarter of 2019, XRP was less correlated with other digital assets, compared to ETH, cardano (ADA), EOS, and litecoin (LTC).

Comparison of quarterly average correlation coefficients for the five highest correlating assets:

The higher the number, the stronger correlation is. Source: Binance Research

In any case, the disappointing performance of XRP is perhaps even more surprising given the recent announcement from the company that it slashed sales of XRP from its massive escrow fund last quarter.

Further, speculations about a possible initial public offering for the company later this year has not helped XRP either, with the virtual currency remaining basically unmoved by the news.

Also, last week, major crypto payments processor BitPay launched support for XRP and announced eGifter and CareUSA among the first merchants to accept the coin as a payment method upon launch.

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