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XRP prices rose on Friday as interest in cryptocurrencies rose after Elon Musk’s Tesla raised $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and BNY Mellon and Mastercard took steps to use the digital tokens.
XRP, the cryptocurrency of the Ripple network, rose to 15% before falling slightly. According to Bitstamp, it was up 11% to $ 0.5987 from 9:00 ET.
The bitcoin price was 1.4% higher at $ 48,129 on the Bitstamp exchange, just a record high of more than $ 48,300 which was touched on Thursday.
Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla revealed on Monday that it had bought $ 1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and plans to accept it as payment.
The announcement raised bitcoin to a record high of more than $ 48,000. The currency has turned below $ 40,000 for most of the previous two weeks.
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On Thursday, bitcoin jumped to a new high of more than $ 48,300 after BNY Mellon and Mastercard both warmed up to cryptocurrencies.
Mastercard has announced that it will allow merchants to accept certain cryptocurrencies from its year. And Bank of New York Mellon said it will issue, hold and transfer bitcoin to customers in the future.
The announcements seem to have boosted other crypto-assets like Ripple’s XRP and Ethereum’s ether.
Ether, the native crypto-currency in the Ethereum network, was around $ 1,793 on Bitstamp on Friday morning. But that was not far from a record high of more than $ 1,800 reached earlier in the week.
However, ‘meme’ cryptocurrency dogecoin fell about 7% to $ 0.068.
‘It turns out [XRP network] Ripple, like many others, is riding the bitcoin wave, ‘said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at currency firm Oanda.
‘Although it’s performing significantly better so far today. It does have a lot of lost ground to make up for, but that may explain why it is being targeted.
“There does not seem to be much else behind the movements, which should always be a source of concern, but that does not mean that, as we have seen so often, it can earn significantly more.”
The Ripple network’s cryptocurrency is very volatile. XRP rose and crashed in early February when a buy-and-hold scheme organized by Reddit apparently fell apart after the price hit $ 0.74.
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