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The price of XRP jumped on Friday as interest in cryptocurrencies increased after Elon Musk’s Tesla snapped up $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and BNY Mellon and Mastercard took steps to use digital tokens.
XRP, the cryptocurrency of the Ripple network, increased by up to 15%, before falling slightly. It rose 11% to $ 0.5987 from 9am ET, according to Bitstamp.
The price of bitcoin was 1.4% higher at $ 48,129 on the Bitstamp exchange, just out of a record of more than $ 48,300 played on Thursday.
Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car company, revealed on Monday that it had purchased $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and planned to start accepting it as payment.
The announcement made bitcoin skyrocket to a record of more than $ 48,000. The currency hovered below $ 40,000 for much of the previous two weeks.
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On Thursday, bitcoin jumped to a new high above $ 48,300 after BNY Mellon and Mastercard adopted cryptocurrencies.
Mastercard has announced that it will allow merchants to accept selected cryptocurrencies on its network from the end of this year. And Bank of New York Mellon said it will issue, hold and transfer bitcoin to customers in the future.
The ads appear to have boosted other cryptographic assets, like Ripple’s XRP and Ethereum’s ether.
Ether, the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network, was virtually stable at $ 1,793 at Bitstamp on Friday morning. But it was not far from a record of more than $ 1,800 set earlier in the week.
Dogecoin cryptocurrency ‘Meme’ fell about 7%, to $ 0.068, however.
“Looks like [XRP network] Ripple, like many others, is riding the bitcoin wave, “said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at foreign exchange firm Oanda.
“Although he is performing significantly better so far. He has a lot of lost ground to recover, so maybe that could explain why he is being targeted.
“There doesn’t seem to be much more behind the movements, which should always be a concern, but that does not mean that it cannot generate significantly greater gains, as we have seen so many times.”
The Ripple network’s cryptocurrency is extremely volatile. The XRP skyrocketed and fell in early February, when a purchase and maintenance scheme organized by Reddit appeared to fall apart after the price reached $ 0.74.
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