Despite Bearish Price, Ripple’s XRP Is Being Utilized In This Unexpected Way

Nick Chong

5 years ago

2 mins read

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Despite it being the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency, cynics have long questioned if XRP has a use case for retail investors and traders.

They ask if it’s only a coin for banks and financial institutions, or if the asset has any investment potential due to the difference between the “tokenomics” of Bitcoin and of XRP.

According to a report from Xpring, Ripple’s developer platform focusing on trends like decentralized finance, the cryptocurrency does have a growing use case for retail investors.

Report: XRP Is Finding Use as an Exchange Bridge

Per a report by Xpring’s Shae Wang, XRP is finding use as a medium for transferring value between cryptocurrency exchanges. This is similar to how Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether’s USDT are used as a bridge between platforms because of their widespread adoption and liquidity.

“As market activities increased, network congestion on Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) reached unprecedented levels—transaction fees for both assets exceeded 5x the norm. […] We saw evidence that many users, especially Ethereum users, may be shifting to the digital asset XRP for exchange balance transfers,” Wang wrote.

Her analysis indicated that whenever Ethereum transaction fees spiked, there was an increase in the number of XRP transactions sent between exchange accounts, along with trading volume of the XRP/ETH pair.

Chart from Xpring's "How XRP Enables Faster, Low-Cost Cross Exchange Transfers" by Shae Wang, data analyst at the firm — Chart from Xpring’s “How XRP Enables Faster, Low-Cost Cross Exchange Transfers” by Shae Wang, a data analyst at the firm.

This analysis indicates that the altcoin is finding use as a bridge currency, but this factor alone is unlikely to boost the cryptocurrency in the long run.

The Crypto Has a Bearish Technical Outlook

While XRP may be catching a bid because it is being used to transfer value between exchanges, the technical outlook for the cryptocurrency purportedly is bearish.

Per previous reports from NewsBTC, Nik Patel — a prominent cryptocurrency trader and technical analysis author — believes that XRP holding under $0.21 means the cryptocurrency’s market structure has turned bearish.

“I am particularly interested in the highlighted area from which market structure has recently broken and turned bearish. This break and turn occurred from an important area also: the 200-day moving average,” he explained, referencing the chart below.

XRPUSDDaily — XRP price chart shared by Nik Patel in the latest edition of his “Market Outlook” series. The chart shows a somewhat bearish outlook, with the cryptocurrency breaking below a key historical resistance and undergoing a rejection at the 200-day moving average.

Patel elaborated that should XRP continue to be rejected from the “underside of this area,” the $0.21 range, he expects a “swift move below $0.175.” After that, he wrote, there is likely to be an eventual retest of the range lows at $0.125, the lows the cryptocurrency reached during the “Black Thursday” crash in March.

Nick Chong

I am a writer who has been following Bitcoin for years now. My insights and interviews have been featured in leading publications in the industry such as LongHash and Decrypt. I own a small amount of Bitcoin.