Bitcoin Regains $28,000, XRP Hits New 10-Month High in Crypto Market Increase

Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Wednesday, riding out jitters from a US regulatory complaint against the industry’s biggest exchange that held out hopes for easier US oversight.

BitcoinBTC rose 4% in the past 24 hours to $28,434 as of 4:16 p.m. in New York, according to Messari. The token has increased 71% this quarter to a market cap of $549 billion.

Ether, which has added 1.5% since yesterday, is trading at $1.807. The second largest cryptocurrency measured by market capitalization is up 50% this year.

Many investors are closely watching XRPXRP, which surged 7.4% – briefly hitting 58 cents, its highest level since May – amid hopes that Ripple Labs, the company closely associated with the token, will win its legal battle against US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC sued the San-Francisco-based firm in late 2020, alleging that Ripple and two of its executives, Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, raised over $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP in an unregistered securities offering to investors in United States and worldwide. Ripple uses XRP for a money transfer service, but did not create the token.

“We expect a decision to come this year, but it could come at any time – it could be weeks, it could be months. The timing is ultimately up to the judge, Stacey Ngo, Ripple’s senior director of communications, said in a written comment to Forbes.

The positive outlook for XRP may also stem in part from the classification of some major crypto assets such as bitcoin, ether and litecoin pending in the CFTC complaint against Binance. Although the agency did not mention XRP, Ripple’s chief technology officer David Schwartz has previously argued that XRP is a commodity.

“XRP is a commodity that trades and one XRP is treated as equal to every other XRP. That’s pretty much the definition of a ‘commodity,'” Schwartz said in a post in January Twitter.

The SEC and CFTC have been waging a turf war over regulation of digital assets. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has argued that all cryptocurrencies except bitcoin should be considered securities and thus fall under his agency’s oversight. The CFTC, which regulates commodities, is seen as less demanding and has been given more authority in pending legislation in the Senate, but the White House, federal agencies and some lawmakers have taken an increasingly hard line against the crypto industry this year.

The cryptocurrency market stands at $1.2 trillion, up 3.3% since Tuesday.

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