Three Reasons Behind Ripple's Recent Rally

Ripple has surged over the past week for the first time in a while. Once trading as high as KRW 4,000, Ripple is now trading in the KRW 600 range. When it hit a low in the KRW 300 range not long ago, few expected Ripple to come back to life. Over the past week, Ripple rose 140%, and the day before yesterday it jumped 63% in a single day. It even dominated Naver's real-time search rankings all day long.

It has pulled back a little for now, but it briefly overtook Ethereum to take the No. 2 spot by market cap. So why is Ripple's price soaring like this? We can't say for sure, but there are a few plausible explanations.

First, a quick look at Ripple: it's a California-based network payment system. It first launched in 2012. It was developed for use in transferring funds between businesses. In other words, while cryptocurrencies (crypto) tend to push back against the existing market to some degree, Ripple is a coin that's quite friendly to today's governments, banks and businesses. That's also why Ripple was able to sign agreements with Lian-Lian, a Chinese payment system, and Western Union.

Reason 1 for Ripple's rally: the xRapid launch

xRapid is a technology for sending and receiving funds using blockchain-based Ripple. Back in May, there was a test of fund transfers between the US and Mexico using Ripple's technology. Reportedly, it cut transfer fees by around 40–70% compared with traditional banking methods. Ripple is fast, to be fair. Funds can be sent and received in about 1–2 minutes. Of course, there's the risk that Ripple's value can swing sharply.

Ripple chart showing it more than doubled in a week

Either way, the news of the xRapid launch is believed to be the first reason behind Ripple's recent rally. In an interview with CNBC, Ripple said xRapid could launch commercially sometime next month. Notably, this past August, Ripple also signed a partnership with Bittrex.

Reason 2 for Ripple's rally: PNC joins RippleNet

The news that PNC, one of the top 10 banks in the US, joined RippleNet is believed to be the second reason behind Ripple's rally. RippleNet is a decentralized bank payment system, with xCurrent as its flagship product. PNC has about 8 million customers. On September 19, PNC joined RippleNet and announced it would use Ripple's technology for its customers' international transfers. It was the first major US bank to do so.

Reason 3 for Ripple's rally: FOMO

This may be something you hear about every coin that goes up, but it could also be that investors simply jumped on a soaring coin, regardless of the two strategic deals mentioned above. After a long slump of about a year, it had been quite rare to see a relatively major altcoin, rather than a junk altcoin, shoot up like this.

In fact, during this skyrocketing run, Ripple took over Naver's real-time search rankings, briefly bringing back memories of the bull run when it soared to KRW 4,000. And as you can see in the image below, the majority of the trading volume came from Korean exchanges. That wraps up our look at the three reasons behind Ripple's recent rally. The table below shows Ripple's live price.

Three Reasons Behind Ripple's Recent Rally

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