XRP Spikes 10% as Several Institutions Adopt Ripple's Services

XRP has spiked in the past 24 hours to become the top-performing crypto majors, as bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) held steady.

Prices rose over 11% before slightly retreating on Monday, with trading volumes spiking to $2 billion from Sunday’s $1 billion, CoinGecko data shows. At the time of writing, XRP traded at 69 cents and replaced BNB as the fourth-largest token by market capitalization.

Data suggests the gains were largely spot-driven as liquidations on XRP-tracked futures breached just over $4.4 million. A large liquidation amount may have suggested that the use of high leverage may have boosted prices.

No immediate catalyst for the gains existed on Monday. However, bulls may have reacted to two positive developments for payments firm Ripple from last week as the company won key approvals to operate and offer services in Georgia and Dubai.

Ripple said last Thursday that the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) approved XRP under its virtual assets regime – allowing licensed firms in the Dubai International Financial Centre, a financial sandbox, to incorporate and offer XRP to clients as part of their crypto services.

On the same day, the firm said it would start working with the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) on the Digital Lari (GEL) pilot project, which will use the firm’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform.

Hong Kong and Taiwan governments are already using the CBDC service, which launched in May. Institutions can use the platform to manage and customize the entire life cycle of the CBDC, which includes minting, distribution, redemption and token burning.

Central banks can issue both wholesale and retail CBDCs, which can make offline transactions as well.

Ripple has historically maintained a distance from XRP, the token that powers some of its products and the XRP Ledger network. But any progress in Ripple’s court cases, or licenses, clearly impacts XRP prices as traders consider the two related.