Ripple XRP Price Soars 10%, Boosts Bitcoin, Ethereum Prices

Bitcoin (BTC), as of writing, is nearing $8,000 and is looking to cap off new gains from an initial move on Sunday. But what led the crypto market rally at the start of the week isn't the most popular coin by market cap but Ripple (XRP).

The third-largest coin by market cap was the driving force behind the gains on most cryptocurrencies on Monday after being up by more than 10%. Among the top ten cryptos on the digital currency exchange Coinbase, Stellar Lumens (XLM) followed XRP's lead with 8.57% and Chainlink (LINK) with 6.24%.

Ethereum (ETH) is up 3.69% and currently trades at $143 after dipping to $125 on the second day of 2020. Most analysts predict that ETH will soar past $200 by mid-January. BTC changed +5.33% within the 24-hour period.

Three positive events happened for Ripple recently. One is related to MoneyGram, a company that Ripple invested $20 million in back in November. As CCN points out, XRP's price could have risen, in part, due to the news that MoneyGram had achieved a record in online transaction growth with 70% year-on-year over Christmas.

Another one is the XRP/USDT futures contract, which was launched on the same day by leading exchange Binance. Binance Futures would allow traders to trade the contract up to 75 times leverage.

And lastly, the large uptick in XRP sales that is on target to surpass 2018 sales. However, this has been a contentious issue for Ripple as it faces accusations of dumping XRP. Cointelegraph even reported last year that Ripple sold $250 million worth of XRP in the second quarter of 2019.

But the CEO of the payment network contended the allegations in a CNN interview that it is not in their best interest to dump XRP. "We would never do that and in fact, we've taken steps to lock up most of the XRP we own in escrows so we can't touch it."

Garlinghouse also said that his company couldn't control XRP's price any more than the whales can control the price of BTC.

Ripple currently trades as $0.21451.