XRP, the digital token used in Ripple Labs' payment network, headed for its best weekly performance in more than three years, after doubling in the past seven days.
The price of XRP (XRP) is up 118% in the seven days through April 11, according to TradingView, using pricing from the Bitstamp exchange. That's the biggest weekly gain since December 2017, when the token jumped 215% in a seven-day period.
XRP struggled toward the end of 2020 as Ripple faced allegations from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that executives raised more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital-asset securities offering using XRP.
But prices for the token have climbed sixfold this year as some traders looked through the SEC case and analysts saw bullish patterns in price charts.
Peter Brandt, an analyst with over four decades of experience tracking commodity markets, predicted last week that new all-time highs could be seen for the cryptocurrency in the coming months. Brandt identified a pattern in XRP’s weekly price chart that he described as a “possible inverted head-and-shoulders with a stunted right shoulder.”
The pattern “would indicate prices a boatload higher" to new all-time highs, Brandt, CEO of Factor LLC, tweeted Friday.
There's a wide range of views on how to calculate XRP's market value, due to questions about the outstanding supply of tokens.
According to the CoinDesk pricing page for XRP, the token has a market capitalization of about $140 billion. CoinMarketCap.com puts the "fully diluted market cap" at $140 billion, but the actual market cap at about $64 billion. Messari, the cryptocurrency analysis firm, puts the "reported market cap" at $52 billion.