FOMO Moments

Another week begins in crypto land and the Asian markets are bubbling away nicely. Most altcoins are in the green, albeit marginally, although Bitcoin hasn’t really moved over the past 24 hours and is still floating around $11,500. Total market capacity has reached a weekly high this morning of $465 billion and one altcoin is leading the pack once again. Ripple’s XRP is showing the greatest gains during the Asian trading session.

Coinmarketcap reports that Ripple is trading 10% higher on the day. Since its almighty spike at the beginning of the year XRP has been largely trending downwards and has gone back below a dollar several times, the lowest point being $0.60 on February 6. Today it is back over a dollar again trading up from $0.90 where it has been for the last couple of days. Despite a growing number of new partnerships Ripple’s cryptocurrency has failed to gain momentum.

This morning’s price spike has been caused by the acceptance of a number of banks in the region and new trials for fund transfers. South Korea’s Woori Bank is currently testing the Ripple network for overseas transactions and the Japanese Bank Consortium is also using the company’s RippleNet to speed up transfers and eventually do away with the archaic Swift system. A bit of hype from a few crypto executives including the Coinbase President and Ripple CEO appearing on CNBC’s ‘Fast Money’ show on Tuesday with a possible announcement has also renewed interest.

XRP is a favourite among Asian traders; the lion’s share is traded in South Korea on two main exchanges there, Bithumb and Upbit in KRW. Binance and Bittrex also account for over 20% of the global trade in XRP. Ripple has been solidly planted at third place in the charts with a market cap of just under $40 billion. Around $838 million has been traded in the past 24 hours making XRP the morning’s leading altcoin.

Other altcoins enjoying solid gains in Asia this morning include Stellar Lumens, Monero and Zcash.

More on Ripple can be found here: https://ripple.com/

FOMO Moments is a section that takes a daily look at the top 25 altcoins during the Asian trading session and analyses the best performing one, looking for trends and fundamentals.