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Ripple Price Continues Ascent as Volume Crosses $2 Billion and Asia Rumors Swirl

Last Updated
Josiah Wilmoth
Last Updated

The Ripple price continued to make waves on Wednesday, following up yesterday’s 50% gain with an 18% rise today. Ripple’s rapid ascent has been accompanied by a surge in trading volume, particularly on the major South Korean exchanges, as well as unsubstantiated rumors that Ripple will announce a major partnership.

Ripple Price Approaches Two-Month High

The Ripple price broke out of a three-month slump on August 22, surging 50% to thrust the XRP markets back to their early July levels. That rally continued on August 23, as the Ripple price soared to $0.30 to give Ripple its highest market cap since June. XRP has pulled back slightly to a present value of $0.277, but this still represents a daily gain of 18%.

ripple price
Ripple Price & Market Cap Chart from CoinMarketCap

This rally has enabled Ripple to increase its share of the total cryptocurrency market cap from 4% on August 20 to 7% today, a tremendous feat to accomplish in such a short time.

$2.3 Billion Daily Volume

Ripple’s advance has been accompanied by an absolute explosion in trading volume. Prior to August 21, $588 million was Ripple’s highest single-day trading volume mark, and daily volume had only passed $100 million seven times during the past three weeks.

However, trading volume began to spike on the evening of August 21, ending the day at $447 million. The next day, it soared to $1.45 billion, shattering its previous all-time high. Today, it increased further still, with 24-hour volume topping out at $2.3 billion at about 12:15 UTC.

ripple price
Chart from CoinMarketCap

Once again, the bulk of this volume is concentrated on South Korean exchanges. At present, XRP/KRW pairs on Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit account for more than $1.3 billion of Ripple’s $1.75 billion in daily volume.

Rumors Swirl About Asia Partnership

It is not immediately clear why Korean traders have suddenly become so interested in Ripple. However, there have been rumors floating around on social media that Ripple is about to announce a major partnership with a bank or corporation, most likely in Asia. Thus far, these rumors are completely unsubstantiated. However, Ripple’s Twitter page has been teasing out an announcement about their upcoming conference with a multi-day countdown.

On Monday, Ripple tweeted that there would be “major content and speakers,” which is more or less standard conference advertising. However, some Twitter users immediately noticed–or perhaps imagined–a geometric resemblance between the shape in the tweet and the Korean subcontinent.

https://twitter.com/blockstradamus/status/899839541128777729

Were Ripple trying to tease out a major announcement with a South Korean bank or company, it would be odd to include North Korea in the image.

The next tweet teased that banking and blockchain will “come together,” further fueling speculation that a major banking announcement would take place at the conference.

Wednesday’s tweet proclaimed that “1 vision for the future of payments” will “tak[e] center stage.” Soon after, Ripple tweeted the same phrase–this time in Japanese.

But is Ripple set to make a major announcement that will alter the “future of payments,” or is this just a clever marketing ploy to drum up interest in their conference? We will have to wait until Thursday to find out.

Featured image from Shutterstock.