The cryptocurrency community predicts that the price of $XRP will rise in the near future to close January near the $0.40 mark, representing a 14.3% increase from its current $0.346 level.
The data comes from CoinMarketCap’s price estimate feature, where over 1,300 users predicted the cryptocurrency’s price at the end of the month. In February, the cryptocurrency community expects XRP to trade at $0.399, a 15.35% increase from current levels.
The price of $XRP has dropped significantly from $0.39 in the last 30 days, as part of a broader cryptocurrency market correction that has seen other top cryptocurrencies lose some of their value. Over the same time period, the market’s total capitalization has fallen by more than $50 billion.
According to CryptoGlobe, whale addresses on the $XRP Ledger holding between 100,000 and 10 million tokens (between $34,000 and $3.4 million) have rapidly increased their holdings over the last five weeks, increasing from 16.7% to 18.3% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.
XRP whales began adding to their holdings at the end of September and early October, when the cryptocurrency’s price began to rise as both the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs sought to settle their legal dispute.
In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple and two of its executives, alleging that they sold unregistered securities when they issued $1.3 billion in XRP tokens. Ripple claims that XRP is not a security.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated earlier this year that he believed the company would prevail in its legal battle with the regulator. Several influential cryptocurrency firms, including Coinbase and the Blockchain Association, have filed to support Ripple in recent weeks.
Ripple’s lawyers argued in a recent reply in support of a motion for summary judgement that the regulator has failed to show that any offer or sale of XRP was an investment contract under federal securities laws.
Ripple’s lawyers added that even for transactions “involving an exchange of money,” the SEC failed to “show that purchasers invested that money in a common enterprise,” as the Howey test requires.
The settlement of the lawsuit by Ripple could result in an XRP supply shock, which would presumably lead to a price increase as demand remained constant while supply fell. According to Jeremy Hogan, a legal expert and XRP supporter who has been following the case.
