Ripple (XRP): Exploding Up to $3, But What Gives?

The space was astonished days ago when Ripple (XRP) hit the $1 USD milestone. And we felt the same way when the cryptocurrency burst through $2.

Now? At press time, the XRP price is hovering just under the astonishing $3 milestone. What in the world is happening, many are wondering -- from ardent Ripple supporters to XRP bashers.

There are a few likely culprits behind this surge. So let's dig a little deeper and try to understand "The Rippening."

Rumors of a Coinbase listing

Well, unless you've been living under a rock the past two weeks, you've heard the rallying cries of Ripple supporters saying that a Coinbase listing for XRP seems to be in the cards.

Wishful thinking is always in play when it comes to crypto, but these supporters have been pointing to allegedly leaked screenshots and videos showing Ripple support being added into the Coinbase website.

There's no doubt that these "leaks" and their ramifications have been generating a ton of excitement. But for now, we have to keep in mind it's all speculation at best.

That's because dozens of crypto projects are being rumored as potential Coinbase listees. And leaked images have filtered out of these cryptocurrencies too.

What seems likeliest is that people are spoofing these "leaked" images across the various crypto communities in order to pump their own holdings.

Now, if Coinbase goes and lists 20 cryptocurrencies at once in two weeks, including Ripple, we'll happily admit we were wrong. But even if you look at the Digital Assets Framework that Coinbase and GDAX released weeks ago, Ripple doesn't seem to cleanly meet the exchanges' listing specifications.

Though GDAX and Coinbase said in that same Framework that they reserve the right to ignore their framework's specifications at will. So take that however you will; Ripple fans are certainly pointing to that as a sign of hope.

Asian bank adoption

Banks in Asia are starting to show a willingness to experiment with Ripple, and that's making a ton of difference as far as investors' confidence in the project.

For example, on January 3rd, a consortium of Japanese banks covering a third of Japan's banking institutions have just announced their adoption of Ripple.

Emi Yoshikawa, Ripple's director of partnerships, commented on the announcement:

"The objective of the consortium is to make domestic and cross-border payment efficient by taking advantage of the latest distributed ledger technology available in the world."

And with more potential announcements like this on the horizon, buyers are clearly FOMOing ("fear on missing out") into XRP.

Deceptive price for beginners

A smaller dynamic that's in play surely has to do with the XRP price. There have been an explosion of new investors into the cryptocurrency space, which means many of them aren't savvy to the ways of crypto yet.

Some of these new investors see the cheap price of XRP and want to dive right in, thinking they have just gotten into the next "Bitcoin." What they fail to realize is that Ripple's coin supply is so high that it's all but impossible for XRP to hit the price of what BTC is today.

Even still, some investors are buying in because they think they're getting a great discount on the future when they could be buying the top, at least acutely. We'll have to see how it all shakes out from here.

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