Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has revealed the firm unsuccessfully attempted to settle its securities violation lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and slammed the “regulatory chaos” around cryptocurrencies. I’m not going to litigate the SEC’s unproven allegations on Twitter, and as you can imagine, there are new considerations to what can / should be said publicly after the litigation process starts. However, I would like to address 5 key questions I’ve seen. 1/10 — Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 7, 2021 In a Twitter thread addressing what he described as “5 key questions,” the CEO strongly denied the …

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) hit a new all-time high above $40,000 on Jan. 7 after the price increased by more than $5,000 in less than 24-hours. The $40,000 barrier marks a significant milestone for the top-ranked cryptocurrency. According to Matt Blom, head of global sales trading at EQUOS: “Bitcoin's march to $40k has been driven by fresh capital from huge hedge funds, corporate treasuries and awareness from the investing public that all is not well in the world of fiat. It’s easy to forget that we are still in the very early stages of adoption." Blom added that instead …

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its habit on Jan. 7 of hitting all-time highs almost every day as bulls took the largest cryptocurrency above $38,000. BTC price passes $38,500 Data from Cointelegraph Markets, Coin360 and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it took out another hurdle on the way to the psychologically significant $40,000 milestone. On Thursday, gains accelerated, with Bitcoin investors seeing 24-hour returns of 11.5%. Just a week ago at the start of the year, Bitcoin traded at $28,000. As Cointelegraph reported, the largest cryptocurrency, together with Ether (ETH) and a handful of other altcoins, has become the best investment play of …

Bitcoin (BTC) climbed to fresh all-time highs on Jan. 7, coming within striking distance of $40,000. BTC price reaches $37,800 Data from Cointelegraph Markets, Coin360 and TradingView showed Bitcoin getting yet another boost overnight on Wednesday as protestors stormed the Capitol in Washington D.C. After showing signs of continuing strength during trading the day before, BTC/USD abruptly headed north, reaching a new peak of $37,800. By press time on Thursday, a subsequent retracement had sent the pair focus on the $37,000 mark, with Bitcoin still within 10% of hitting $40,000. According to the latest updates for order books, significant resistance …

Aggressive buying by institutional investors is one of the main reasons for the current Bitcoin (BTC) bull run. Some investors expressed their intent to hold their positions for a few years, but it is also prudent to note that many of these investors have recently developed a love for Bitcoin and their conviction to HODL may not resemble that of the early Bitcoin whales. The current bull market could also differ from the last as institutional investors simply cannot hold on to their positions if Bitcoin unexpectedly enters a sharp correction. These fund managers will have to face angry clients …

Popular wallet provider and crypto trading platform Blockchain.com has announced it will be delisting XRP and suspending its trading next week, following in the steps of Coinbase, Binance.US, OKCoin and others. Although as of press time on Wednesday Blockchain.com's information on supported crypto assets continues to feature XRP, a blog post published on Monday informed users that: "Blockchain.com will halt XRP trading beginning Thursday, January 14th at 11:59pm GMT. For all customers who have XRP balances, you will continue to have access to your XRP to send after we halt trading, but we will no longer support receiving more XRP …

Stellar CTO and Ripple architect Jed McCaleb cashed out a whopping $411 million in XRP in 2020, according to an updated report from blockchain analytics account Whale Alert. McCaleb sold 1.2 billion XRP throughout the year at an average price of $0.34 per coin — amassing close to half a billion dollars. The sum reportedly represents 27% of McCaleb’s XRP stash that is held in a settlement account with Ripple Labs, and marks a sharp acceleration of his sales to date. He sold roughly one billion XRP in the five years between 2014 and 2019. We have updated our analysis …

XRP has once again lost its place as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, with lawsuits mounting against Ripple after one of its major investors followed the SEC in filing a complaint against the project. According to a Jan. 6 report from Bloomberg, Tetragon, one of the lead investors in a $200 million Series C funding round for Ripple in 2019, has filed a complaint against the firm in the Delaware Chancery Court. The investment company claims it is seeking a court to “enforce its contractual right to require Ripple to redeem” Series C preferred stock held by Tetragon. In addition, the firm …

Crypto fans love to defend their favorite assets. Just look at the XRP army and the LINK Marines. Does the hype expressed on Twitter match up with high trading activity though? A few altcoins throughout 2020 revealed mixed results. Using information from The Tie, a crypto data platform, Cointelegraph looked at assets’ Hype-To-Activity Ratios matched against their prices. “Hype-To-Activity Ratio measures the number of tweets a particular coin has per each $1M in reported trading volume of that coin,” Joshua Frank, CEO and co-founder of The Tie, told Cointelegraph, adding: “As of August 15th 2019 the average Hype-To-Activity Ratio in …

Wallets holding oversized XRP positions are plunging quickly in the wake of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Ripple. Industry data reveals just how quickly these so-called XRP whales are sinking. Coin Metrics, a leading data provider on all things cryptocurrency and blockchain, estimated that the number of wallet addresses holding at least 1 million XRP has dropped to 1,567 from 1,721 between Dec. 21, 2020 and Jan. 3. In other words, it appears that XRP whales are liquidating a portion of their holdings amid regulatory uncertainty surrounding Ripple. As the following chart from Coin Metrics illustrates, …

Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest cryptocurrency asset manager, announced Tuesday that it has liquidated its XRP holdings and used the remaining funds to buy up more Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC). The decision affects Grayscale’s Digital Large Cap Fund, a market-cap-weighted asset that provides exposure to the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The sale of XRP occurred on Monday, less than a week after Genesis Global Trading, the fund’s authorized participant, announced it would soon temporarily suspend XRP trading, likely in relation to the lawsuit filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple. Genesis …

Stellar is winning the battle of the blockchain payment networks against Ripple this week as sentiment flips in its favor. Data from monitoring resource The Tie confirms that long-term sentiment toward Stellar's Lumen (XLM) is now higher than toward XRP, the altcoin in which the embattled Ripple is the largest stakeholder. XLM sentiment beats out XRP The figures serve as the latest warning to XRP investors, who have looked on in dismay as legal problems for Ripple in the United States have caused its value to dive by over 60%. As of Jan. 5, the long-term sentiment score collated by …