The price of XRP, the native token of XRP Ledger – the open-source blockchain network designed by Ripple, has been surging on the back of growing optimism that the perennial dispute between Ripple and the SEC will soon reach a positive end.
According to new data pointed out by the crypto market behaviour analytics platform, Santiment, XRP has been gaining in the USD market and against the benchmark cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC).
Per the data noted in a tweet, the price ratio of XRP/BTC has now hit a one-year high of 0.000025 despite “treacherous altcoin conditions”. The beneficiaries in this run-up in XRP’s performance have been active shark and whale addresses – addresses holding between 1 million to 10 million XRP as they have been accumulating since late 2020.
In contrast, the top 330 XRP addresses that hold more than 10 million XRP tokens now hold an all-time low 70.75% of XRP’s circulating supply.
The observation is coming on the back of recent court filings from the SEC and Ripple to have the case proceed to summary judgment. The crypto community has received the move by both parties as a sign of a nearing conclusion to the case, which started in 2020.
This excitement has seen the disputed XRP surge 47.9% in the last week to be trading near a three-month high of $0.50, according to CryptoRank at the time of writing.
Ripple still stands its ground that XRP is not a security
While hoping for a swift resolution of the case, neither Ripple executives, community members, nor the Securities and Exchange Commission are ready to concede to the other. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse commented recently that the case is only a power grab move by the SEC as the regulator’s argument that Ripple is a security has no merit.
“Today’s filings make it clear the SEC isn’t interested in applying the law. They want to remake it all in an impermissible effort to expand their jurisdiction far beyond the authority granted to them by Congress,” he wrote in a tweet.
XRP community members, including attorney John Deaton, leading over 70,000 XRP holders to participate in the proceedings, also hold the same opinion.