XRP Climbs Back up Crypto Rankings With Near 50% Rise

XRP is shrugging off its recent price woes with a double-digit rise Thursday.

The cryptocurrency was trading near $0.35 soon before press time, representing a nearly 50% gain on a 24-hour basis.

As a result, XRP's market capitalization has increased to $13.88 billion, moving it above litecoin as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, according to CoinDesk 20 data. Other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether, and litecoin are also trading higher. Bitcoin rose to fresh record highs above $38,000 early today.

However, despite XRP's bounce, prices are still down 57% from highs above $0.55 observed before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs, the San Francisco-based developer of the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network, for raising $1.3 billion over seven years from retail investors through its sales of XRP.

Announced on Dec. 22, the lawsuit brought an avalanche of exchange delistings and panic selling, causing prices to drop to $0.20 by the end of December.

It remains to be seen if the latest recovery has legs or turns out to be a "dead-cat bounce" – a temporary recovery of asset prices from a notable decline or a bear market followed by a continuation of the downtrend.

According to analysts, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) recent decision to allow U.S. banks to use public blockchains and dollar-backed stablecoins as a settlement infrastructure in the financial system is favorable for XRP and payments-focused Stellar blockchain's XLM token.

XRP, however, may have a hard time cheering the good news until it has dealt with the SEC case, Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based prime brokerage Bequant told CoinDesk on Wednesday.

UPDATE (Jan. 7, 19:17 UTC): Corrects XRP market value.