Why Is XRP (Ripple) Hitting Record Highs Despite SEC Threat?

XRP (XRP) — the token associated with Ripple, defying the looming SEC threat, shot up nearly 19% above the psychologically important $1 level at press time on Wednesday.

What Happened: The cryptocurrency has risen 88.65% on a seven-day trailing period to $1.04.

XRP's current price is 72.9% below the $3.84 all-time-high it touched 3 years ago.

In comparison, the apex cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) was down 2.24% over 24 hours at $57,619.06 at press time.

XRP’s ascent comes despite the threat of looming litigation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over an alleged unregistered $1.3 billion securities offering that Ripple conducted.

Undeterred by the SEC, the token is likely getting buoyed by the committed XRP community, popularly known as the XRP army, CoinDesk reported.

Ben Powers, a privacy reporter at CoinDesk, said in a panel discussion Monday that the community was still buying XRP. He attributed the buying to the “tribalism of crypto.”

“You know, like people have their camps, and they rep them hard.” Powers also noted the wider range of cryptocurrencies beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.

“The SEC can take action, but these are currencies that go beyond just the reach of the U.S.,” said the reporter. 

Why It Matters: Out of the top five XRP exchanges, two — VCC and HBTC — are based in Singapore. Bidesk is based in Australia, while Binance is not under the purview of U.S. regulations, as per CoinDesk.

In late December, Coinbase suspended trading in XRP after the news of the SEC lawsuit emerged.

“The XRP army is not going to be dissuaded by an SEC enforcement, even if it means that Ripple and XRP could ultimately get iced out of a major financial market,” said Danny Nelson, another CoinDesk reporter on the panel.

XRP was among the list of ten trending tickers on Stocktwits.com but was notably behind Ethereum

Classic (ETC), and Dogecoin (DOGE) in terms of rank.

ETC traded 21.21% higher at $20.40 while  DOGE traded 8.59% higher at $0.65 at press time.

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Photo Courtesy: QuoteInspector