Bitcoin Holds Steady at $27.6K; Why Are XRP, AVAX Prices Pumping?

Bitcoin held steady above the $27,600 level Thursday as ether (ETH) stabilized from a multi day drop, while XRP and Avalanche’s AVAX jumped.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value gained just over 0.6% in the past 24 hours, seemingly stabilizing above the $27,600 level after losing support at $28,000 earlier this week. Ether fell 0.5%, Solana’s SOL fell 1.4%, while Cardano’s ADA and BNB Chain’s BNB traded flat.

XRP tokens gave back some gains after a 5% jump on Wednesday, following two key developments for payments company Ripple. The firm’s Asian arm was awarded a Singapore license to offer its payment services to users in the region, while the U.S. entity gained a win as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lost a bid to appeal in the Ripple case.

“It's fantastic to see Ripple bat away the SEC's legal action. This further underscores the urgent need for clear and well-defined regulations,” said David Janczewski, CEO of blockchain protection company CoinCover.

“The surge in XRP shows that regulatory clarity is a catalyst for market confidence and will create the responsible growth that policymakers want to see,” Janczewski added.

Ripple has historically maintained a distance from XRP, the token that powers some of its products and the XRP Ledger network. But any progress in Ripple’s court cases, or licenses, clearly has an impact on XRP prices as traders consider the two related.

Why AVAX Saw a Boost?

Avalanche tokens seemed to get a boost as demand increased after popular accounts on social app X, formerly Twitter, seemed to promote an application built on the blockchain.

Stars Arena as it is called, is similar to Friend.Tech, a viral app that allows Ethereum users to buy “shares” of X accounts in return for certain privileges. The platform recorded over 600,000 transactions since Monday, DappRadar data shows.

AVAX prices jumped as much as 6% on Wednesday before retreating, while on-chain data showed a nearly 40% increase in transactions since the start of this week.

Meanwhile, Ruslan Lienkha, chief of markets at YouHodler, told CoinDesk in an email that crypto prices could see an upswing only if developers took steps to become more compliant with regulatory expectations.

“Positive internal factors in the crypto world will lead to capital inflow, such as broader adoption, growing institutional interest, more jurisdictions with transparent regulation, and better technologies,” Lienkha said.

The trader opined spot bitcoin ETFs could also aid a rally in the broader crypto market, with prices expected to touch at least $40,000, considering current developments.

“As of now, the SEC has fewer arguments to reject spot ETFs, so we expect the first approval of spot BTC ETFs will happen in Q4 or at the beginning of 2024,” Leinkha said. “In the case of stock index tranquility, BTC price will increase by the end of the year to the zone of $35,000-$40,000.”