Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, EOS, Bitcoin SV and Monero rise against the dollar. XRP has experienced a drop of approximately 90% compared to that one of Bitcoin.
XRP investors have not had many reasons to rejoice in 2019. For most of the year, XRP remained in a range of approximately US $0.30 to 0.50 per cryptocurrency, and far from the highs of more than US $3 in 2017. Then, in early August, XRP broke its support level of US $0.30, falling to new lows in 2019.
XRP is being traded at US $0.26 per token today. During the 10 days before August 22nd it remained below US $0.30 on a sustained basis. The crossing of that line of US $0.30 seems significant given XRP’s recent history. Since cryptocurrency prices soared at the end of 2017, the price of the token has only dropped below US $0.30 on an occasional basis and has normally remained low for a few days.
Its latest decline reflects a trend that has been seen throughout the summer of 2019: a growing preference of investors for Bitcoin over almost all other cryptocurrencies. Since April, the domain of Bitcoin has been steadily rising, going from approximately 50% to almost 70% today. Of course, a good part of the money that is flowing into Bitcoin may come from other companies such as XRP, since investors move their funds to create Bitcoin-focused portfolios.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this flow of funds is to examine the XRP-BTC exchange rate. The approximate value of 1 XRP token is 2,627 satoshis, a low that has not been seen in XRP since December 2017.
In fact, shortly after Ripple’s explosive growth in December 2017, an XRP token was being traded at more than 25,000 satoshis. This means that XRP has seen a drop of 90% in terms of Bitcoin and 95% in terms of the US dollar since it broke all-time highs 20 months ago.
In terms of both Bitcoin and the dollar, XRP has dropped significantly this year. Alarmingly, while most other altcoins have declined in terms of Bitcoin due to their growing dominance in the market, many of them have continued their bullish trend against the dollar.
Ether, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Litecoin, Bitcoin SV and Monero, almost all major Altcoins, have declined in terms of Bitcoin but have risen in terms of dollar prices. According to CoinMarketCap, XRP is the only major altcoin that is below both metrics.
The truth is that it does have company outside major altcoins, since Stellar and TRX are large companies that have also fallen compared to the dollar so far this year. However, that will not be of great comfort to XRP investors, especially considering that the company has generated some high-profile headlines during the year 2019 and that it has not had much to show regarding the price of the token.
The partnership with MoneyGram, for example, made the price of XRP go from around US $0.40 to almost US $0.50. However, just a week later, it plummeted back to the levels before that partnership, and even lower.
In the cryptocurrency market, the increase in the price of Bitcoin is often compared to a rising tide that raises all ships. However, as the Bitcoin tide rises and the altcoins follow it, at least in terms of dollars, XRP continues sinking.
By Willmen Blanco
