Bitcoin steals the glory as XRP sparks life into Crypto

Tuesday 2nd of April 2019 may go down as the start of crypto spring with pretty much all of crypto enjoying double digit gains. And while most crypto experts scratch their heads wondering what the hell just happened, 99% of crypto Twitter traders hastily clean up their feeds and pretend they called this move (I noticed some very respected traders calling for caution even just yesterday and though I did see one trader actually call this move correctly a few days in advance, the law of averages says somebody is always going to guess right).

We are (hopefully) at the end of a very long bear market and (as long as today is not a bear trap fake-out) a double digit green day is long overdue. But while everyone is getting far too excited about some large green candles or trying to find reason as to why Bitcoin has shot up and pulled the market with it today, I would like to argue that this was actually a defensive move on the part of Bitcoin and that the real driving force is actually one of the (so far) smaller gainers from today…

BTC and XRP are the only cryptos capable of moving the entire market

There are only two cryptos with any real power over the markets. Bitcoin has its first mover advantage and the base pairing influence. XRP has the technology, the security, the use cases and the partnerships. No other cryptos have any influence whatsoever (no matter what Ethereum fans would have you believe).

Bitcoin and XRP are mortal enemies because only one of them can be top dog and the mining cartels and early investors have far too many Bitcoins they need to offload slowly in order not to crash the price too much. And if XRP ever were to take top spot in the crypto markets, the Bitcoin price would drop like a stone as the Prince Bitcoin illusion fades and it turns back into a stinky old toad.

But what does any of this have to do with today’s price movement? Well, everything. Throughout the long, cold crypto winter there have been a large number of times when the entire market moved in unison. A lot of the time the movements were political of nature (and I count all the fake news in this bracket as well) but we will ignore these movements for this discussion. We can also see a number of times when Bitcoin tried to move the market (most of the downward movements were nothing more than the miners having to liquidate stock to pay the electricity bills) but on occasion Bitcoin did try and move the market up.

What most people miss is that XRP has also been making moves during the bear market. XRP has made numerous attempts to drag the market up but in nearly every case Bitcoin has responded – mostly within minutes – to either follow suit or much more commonly to crash the entire market over the top of XRPs move rendering the push invalid. Today everyone is talking about Bitcoins big push upward. For those of us who dig a little deeper we can actually see XRP making the move up 2 hours before Bitcoin responded.

Why did Bitcoin respond with an upward trajectory?

As we have discussed, Bitcoin needs to retain the illusion of being number 1 for as long as it takes the Bitcoin Maxis to be able to liquidate for a good price. During the bear market the Maxis crushed the competition (and XRP is the only crypto they consider as competition) by killing the market. But in today’s market condition with the bottom seemingly in – the recent and continued sneaky institutional accumulation having also removed a lot of resistance above – a large scale Bitcoin push up would take away the glory from XRP and see bots and traders also lean heavily in Bitcoins favour.

But why was XRP such a threat today?

Every day new exchanges add XRP and other exchanges make XRP a base pairing. Every week more and more new partners emerge for XRP technologies like Ripple’s xRapid, r3’s Corda, Coil’s Coil, etc. Every week we see more and more other individuals and companies working on XRP based products (XRPLabs, Scooter Braun, Forte, etc). So much is happening that I can’t go into it here so I suggest you read the monumental Q1 report by Leonidas Hadjiloizou. I’ll give you half an hour to get your head around the incredible amount of progress XRP is making…

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You done reading that monster update? Incredible right! Makes you appreciate just how much manipulation, effort and money is going in to keeping XRPs price down. That having been said, with all the news, progression and breakthroughs why should April 2nd be any different?

Coinbase going balls deep on XRP

Last month Coinbase added a new feature to their website and it was made public yesterday that Coinbase is entering the global remittance market with XRP being at the forefront of their system. Once it was confirmed the news was not a sick April Fool joke, the market started getting excited: https://www.coinbase.com/international

Fast and free for all Coinbase users

You can now send money to any user with a Coinbase account around the world using XRP or USDC. By using cryptocurrencies that are optimized for cross-border transmission, you can send and receive money virtually instantly by sending those cryptocurrencies and having the recipient convert them into local currency. There’s zero fee for sending to other Coinbase users and a nominal on-chain network fee for sending outside of Coinbase.

Swiss stock exchange Zerping it up

The second and more crucial bit of news comes from the Switzerland Stock Exchange, SIX. A couple of months ago SIX announced they were adding an XRP based ETP (exchange traded product) called Amun Ripple XRP (AXRP) ETP. This was scheduled to go live today and in a shock worldwide exclusive they didn’t delay their product (I know right, WTF).

SBI, Bakkt, Fidelity and the rest should maybe buy a Swiss watch or two so they can get things done on time in future!

The price wants to catch up with the news

There’s only so long you can hold a good thing down and XRP is greatly oversold this year so a few hours before SIX opened for trading the Asian markets started heavily buying XRP. Bitcoin was caught with its trousers down and after an hour or two working out how to put a lid on the incoming XRP bull run they reacted with the defensive Bitcoin spikes we saw this morning. Green dildo after green dildo was enough to put XRP firmly back in its place and negate the heir to their throne from closing the gap… for today at least.

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