Ripple (XRP) Price Breaks above $0.40

Ripple gained escape velocity from the series of altcoin pumps, as Bitcoin stalled below $17,000 and interest spilled over to altcoins.

The market price of Ripple (XRP) proved the expectations of technical analysts, and confidently headed to climb above $0.40. Just a week after the completion of the lockup program, XRP moved from its bounds where it spent a few months and has picked a trajectory similar to IOTA (MIOTA).

For a short spike, XRP reached an all-time high of $0.43, higher than the price during the boom of altcoins this May.

At first it seemed the lockup was already discounted by the market and XRP would continue its usual levels, given that even without the locked funds, the circulating supply of coins is quite large. At the moment, XRP competes with Litecoin for position 4 on CoinMarketCap, while Litecoin (LTC) continues its upward run to potentially overtake Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

But the real takeoff for XRP may come through a listing on Coinbase, as the team recently added a Ripple expert in its next round of expansion. The listing in 2018 is still uncertain, but may be one of the causes behind the climb.

Additionally, the Ripple project relies on banks and online payment providers to drive its future growth. XRP itself is not directly a coin for payments, but can be a carrier of value to represent assets and serve as a bank's back office operation.

More than 75 banks in addition to other firms and institutions have shown readiness to test the Ripple network for interbank transactions as an alternative to the current SWIFT system, which has been known to be exposed to hacks. There has been some talk of partnerships with the likes of Uber and Amazon, but so far the news are speculative.

On Wednesday, XRP continued its rise, peaking by 8.96% in an hour, to an average price of $0.42. XRP trades at a premium on Bitfinex, where inflows of BTC lifted the price to $0.46, with a lowest price of $0.38 on Kraken.