In a long-awaited decision, Judge Torres ruled in favor of XRP in their case against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday. The verdict is a positive development for the cryptocurrency industry, particularly with a focus on whether digital assets should be deemed securities in the US.

The ruling is expected to set a precedent for the industry moving forward. It is positive for both altcoins and the wider industry, as the default expectation is that these assets are not deemed securities so long as they are made available to the public. 

This event will likely have wider implications for ongoing legal cases and may help rebuild confidence in the industry for developers and attract more liquidity to the ecosystem.

XRP Defies Expectations With Massive Price Surge And Trading Volume Spike

Following the news, XRP saw a surge in price, reaching as high as $0.93, the highest price since May 2021, and closing at $0.82. 

According to data compiled by the research company CCData, the news led to an influx of trading activity, with XRP trading pairs on centralized exchanges (CEX) recording a total volume of $6.05 billion on the day, an increase of 1351% from the previous day.

The relisting of the asset on other centralized exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini has also contributed to the spike in volumes. 

The news surrounding the ruling also led to almost 100% daily gains for XRP, with other tokens such as Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA), recently deemed securities, seeing significant gains of 35% and 28%, respectively.

Despite the negative backdrop that XRP has faced due to the lawsuit, its market depth liquidity at the 1% level has remained resilient year-to-date (YTD). XRP’s 1% bid/ask side depth at Yearly Open was 26.5 million XRP, which saw a variance of 0.41% throughout the year and remained strong at 25.1 million XRP on the 12th of July.

Derivatives Data Shows Positive Sentiment

According to the report, Derivatives data indicate that XRP’s positive funding rate remained steady over the past few days, in line with the wider positive market sentiment. 

The lawsuit news generated a significant rise in speculative interest on the bid side, with a $280 million increase in Open Interest, from $635 million to a high of $913 million across exchanges. Moreover, funding rates reached over 0.03% across exchanges, over three times higher than its baseline level of under 0.01% before the announcement.

On the other hand, the funding rate history of XRP shows that speculators trading perpetual contracts have been favoring the upside, with minimal time spent this year in negative funding rate territory. 

This underscores the positive sentiment of traders for XRP, which was recently rewarded with a large price rise due to the announcement. While it remains to be seen whether XRP will maintain its extremely positive funding rate, it is currently a good standard for gauging positive sentiment within altcoins, given the attention and volume it is generating.

Considering the lawsuit’s success, the implications for the market are overwhelmingly positive, and the ruling provides clarity that did not exist before the judgment. 

According to CCData, the market could see a few trends emerge, such as coins deemed securities recovering well and potentially outperforming and the potential for Bitcoin dominance to drop as an overall percent of market cap, given renewed optimism in altcoins.

Despite the recent surge in positive sentiment and renewed investor confidence, XRP has experienced a significant price drop. After coming close to reaching the $1 mark, which it has not seen since November 2021, XRP is currently trading at $0.7002, marking a decrease of over 11% in the last 24 hours.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView.com

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ July 14, 2023 9:00 pm