XRP Crash Burns Other Crypto Asset Values, BTC Price Remains Unscathed

Digital currency markets have seen some volatile action this week and during the last 24 hours following the XRP charges, a number of coins shed a great deal of value. At the time of publication, the entire crypto-economy is valued at $629 billion and because XRP lost so much value, bitcoin’s dominance index has risen above the 68% mark.

Just recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives. According to the U.S. regulator’s complaint, Ripple Labs “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.” Since then, the price of XRP fell like a rock, losing nearly 40% during the last 24 hours of trading sessions since the SEC announcement. The XRP plunge has also tugged a number of other crypto-assets down as well during the trading sessions on December 23.

Bitcoin (BTC) on the other hand, has been doing well despite the regulatory action against Ripple Labs. BTC is currently swapping for $23,796 per coin and is up 1.5% during the last day. Seven-day stats show BTC has gained more than 11%, over 29% for the 30-day span, and 120% over the last three months of trading. BTC’s market dominance in comparison to the 7,500+ coins in existence is 68% today, which is higher than it has been in quite some time. Currently, out of the $629 billion crypto-economy market cap, BTC captures $442 billion.

Ethereum (ETH) is trading for $612 per ether and the token is down after taking some losses during the early morning trading sessions on Wednesday. ETH’s market cap is hovering at around $69 billion at the time of publication. Market statistics show that XRP is swapping for $0.33 per unit and is still down 30% since its initial fall. The market capitalization of XRP has plunged to $15.4 billion and the market is now below tether’s (USDT) overall valuation of over $20 billion.

Litecoin (LTC) has been hit far less than most of the other crypto assets in the economy today after the XRP announcement. LTC is swapping for $109 per coin and has a market cap of around $7.25 billion. The crypto asset LTC is still up over 20% during the last seven days of trading. Bitcoin cash (BCH) is down over 6% today and trading for $296 per unit at the time of publication. BCH has an overall market valuation of around $5.52 billion and the crypto asset is up 38% during the last 90 days.

While many analysts have been watching crypto markets very closely and waiting for a big correction or a higher rally. The trader Crediblecrypto told his 87,000 followers that he expects bitcoin (BTC) to climb higher before the next big correction. “I’m bullish on BTC here,” he tweeted. “I don’t think this is THE correction everyone is waiting for. That will come a bit later IMO.”

During the last 24 hours, onchain stats from Cryptoquant and Glassnode show a number of aggregated inflows to exchanges like Binance, Bithumb, and Gemini. Since the XRP announcement happened, Cryptoquant’s beta alerts on Telegram has been flashing the inflow signals.

However, Glassnode’s statistics from the weekly onchain report indicates that BTC’s “Reserve Risk” has been “extremely low despite the price passing its previous all-time high.” Glassnode’s report also discussed the crypto asset’s Entity-Adjusted SOPR downward correction.

“BTC’s recent downward correction in Entity-Adjusted SOPR was indeed a signal of an approaching upwards trend,” the report notes. “The downward trend has now reversed, suggesting that BTC’s sideways movement below $20k may be well and truly behind us, with new support levels staying above $23k for the time being.”

Meanwhile, XRP took the brunt of the losses during the last day and the digital currency faces delisting as well. For instance, the Hong Kong trading platform OSL had suspended XRP trading and the U.S. crypto exchange Beaxy is doing so as well. The sale of unregistered securities renders Ripple and the XRP cryptocurrency legally dubious and therefore puts Beaxy’s users at risk,” the exchange said on Wednesday morning. “In a constantly evolving regulatory landscape, Beaxy Exchange strives to adjust to developments as rapidly as possible.”

Beaxy’s Head of Operations, Naeem Master further stated:

The SEC and Ripple Labs have been debating XRP’s legal status for years. So the news of SEC charges against Ripple are not unexpected. That being said, Beaxy Exchange has an obligation to operate with regulatory compliance as a priority. In this case, that means halting all trading of XRP on Beaxy.

While some crypto assets have felt the brunt of the XRP storm, a number of digital currencies have done well. Peerplays (PPY) has gained 198%, zilliqa (ZIL) jumped 16%, and populous (PPT) is up over 14% today. XRP suffered the most losses, but coins like golem (GNT -19%), time new bank (TNB -17%), mossland (MOC -17%), and iot chain (ITC -16%) saw decent percentage losses as well.