The start of 2019 produced some epic bounce plays throughout the crypto markets, yet not every coin or token performed the same. During this market cycle we’ve seen many old 2017 ICO projects die, as well as microcaps getting delisted and losing liquidity.
Out of the larger market cap coins, XRP has underperformed most other crypto markets.
The main reason why XRP isn’t performing well is likely because there’s more supply on the market than demand. Every year Ripple Labs sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of XRP, which may have the effect of suppressing the price. The USD charts produced lower lows into a descending triangle and the XRP/BTC charts have been in a bear channel for most of 2019.
Although XRP was a top gainer in 2017, its rallies were short lived and sold into fairly quickly. At one point the XRP/BTC chart crashed so low that it did a full rerace back into the 2016 lows.
Although many banks have been testing the Ripple protocol, they can still send transactions without needing to use the underlying XRP asset. This means that demand is mostly speculation, which makes it difficult to absorb all the fresh supply hitting the market.
Ripple Labs has been selling XRP since 2013 and since it’s a centralized company selling a token that offers no equity, the model is pretty much an ICO. This technically makes XRP one of the longest ICOs in history, with Ripple Labs still controlling around half the supply.
In this video we look at the charts, comparing XRP to the performance of other cryptocurrencies and take a deeper look into the supply/demand dynamics. The goal is to look at this market objectively without a strong emotional attachment in being for or against XRP.