- Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse has praised XRP’s Q4 as historic, highlighting US$1B in XRPL DEX trading volume and increased market optimism driven by favorable US regulatory shifts following the 2024 presidential election.
- Despite global momentum, XRP faces regulatory uncertainty in Hong Kong, where it’s absent from the list of approved crypto assets, possibly due to Ripple’s ongoing legal battles with the US SEC.
According to Ripple’s Q4 2024 report, XRP has rebounded from the depths of the bear market and recorded a 280% surge during Q4 and a XRP Ledger (XRPL) DEX trading volume of US$1B (AU$1.56B), boosting XRP back to the third position among the top cryptocurrencies by market cap, outranking Solana (SOL) and Binance Coin (BNB).
And Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple Labs’ CEO, couldn’t be more happy, stating:
Q4 2024 was absolutely one for the XRP history books. 5 different firms filed for XRP-related ETPs in the US (plus 4 more this month ); $RLUSD launched, hitting a $100M market cap within a month; and on-chain XRPL DEX trading volume reached $1B in Q4!
Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple Labs’ CEONeedless to say, this was a significant recovery for a crypto that had previously fallen out of the top five and with a stagnant price for several years following its 2021 all-time high.
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Stronger Together
The report noted how the XRP community remained strong despite being affected by regulatory pressures from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which Ripple accused of contributing to years of market manipulation.
The crypto community points to the 2024 US presidential election as a key factor in XRP’s resurgence, as President Donald Trump has called for greater regulatory clarity and fairness in the crypto industry, which provided a favourable environment for XRP’s growth.
This shift paved the way for the launch of the Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin and spurred a wave of XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) filings from major financial players, including WisdomTree, CoinShares, Bitwise, Canary Capital and 21Shares.
XRP is currently trading at US$2.28 (AU$3.72), a massive drop of 22.5% from yesterday. The crash comes amid a broader market downturn affecting most crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), which is down to US$95K (AU$154K), as per data from CoinMarketCap.
XRP is known for its strong international momentum, yet the regulatory standing of Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) remains unclear.
Hong Kong’s licensed exchanges operate under strict regulatory guidelines, strongly emphasising anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) compliance. Currently, 10 crypto exchanges have successfully registered under these regulations, allowing them to operate a very specific set of virtual asset trading platforms in the region legally.
But XRP is not one of the permitted assets, and it remains unclear what this omission means long-term. Some speculate that Ripple’s ongoing legal issues with the SEC are influencing the SFC’s cautious approach, but the regulator has not provided any official explanation for XRP’s omission.
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