The crypto market had another excellent weekend, with most major cryptocurrencies surging in value to start a new week. However, XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) has been a clear winner, surging 25.4% since 4 p.m. ET on Friday, as of 2:45 p.m. ET.
This move comes amid a continuation of strong momentum in the crypto sector, as investors price in a much more favorable regulatory environment following the recent Donald Trump presidential election victory. However, for XRP and its parent company Ripple, having previous legal headwinds resolved means much more for investors who have endured a significant amount of pain since late 2022 at the hands of the SEC.
Start Your Mornings Smarter! Wake up with Breakfast news in your inbox every market day. Sign Up For Free "
Aside from broader market-related tailwinds, there are other token-specific factors driving today's positive price action with XRP. Let's dive into what investors are watching when it comes to this top-10 crypto project by market capitalization today.
On Saturday, XRP saw its open interest surge to a record high. A record number of derivatives bets were placed on XRP, with around $2 billion of speculative capital wagered on futures positions on this particular project. When such an enormous amount of capital is placed on leveraged bets that any particular crypto will move in a particular direction, intraday moves can be amplified, spurring the kinds of significant moves we've seen over the past weekend.
In addition to this volatility-enhancing liquidity entering the options market in favor of XRP bulls, rising prices coinciding with these bets signals that it's not recycled money that's leading to these moves -- new capital appears to be entering the fold. That could certainly suggest that institutional capital is now flowing into top-tier assets that aren't Bitcoin or Ethereum, with retail investors looking to ride this wave higher, furthering the voracity of these moves.
That's not to say that this volatility can't or won't come with some potential consolidation (or profit taking) on the horizon. Technical experts have pointed out that XRP's relative strength index, a measure of how overbought or oversold a particular token is, hit 93. That's a level most associate with extremely overbought conditions, and could portend negatively to a sell-off, if sentiment turns around.
For now, momentum does appear to be favoring bulls, with XRP surging more than 5% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing. That said, this token is around 10% off of intraday highs, so there does appear to be at least a minimal level of profit taking happening today.