Ripple seems to have been unable to sustain its bullish momentum on an earlier long-term upside break as the price is breaking below a triangle consolidation pattern. Then again, this could be indicative of a larger correction before more buyers join in.
The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA to confirm that the path of least resistance is to the upside. In other words, the uptrend is still more likely to resume than to reverse. Price is trading below both dynamic inflection points on the 1-hour time frame, though, so there may be a pickup in selling pressure.
Stochastic is treading lower but is hovering around oversold levels, indicating exhaustion among sellers. RSI looks ready to pull back up to reflect a return in bullish pressure. In that case, Ripple might make a retest of the broken triangle support around 0.5500 or resume its move higher. Note that the chart pattern spans 0.3500 to around 0.6500 so the resulting selloff could be of the same size.
Ripple has just announced that xRapid is now commercially available, but it seems that the bullish market reaction has been long-priced in when an exec dropped those hints the other week.
With that, investors might be booking profits from here and waiting for more bullish momentum to pick up, possibly on more developments or signs of widespread adoption among banks and financial institutions. xRapid uses Ripple or XRP itself to facilitate cross-border transactions between counterparties at very low costs and quick speeds.
A number of financial firms are already working with Ripple on its xCurrent messaging platform and are expected to transition to xRapid at some point. According to Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s senior vice president of product, in an interview with CNBC:
I’m really excited to bring the product into the market at a time when there is a lot of skeptcism about digital assets and their real use case. Here’s something where we’re finding a ton of value and providing a ton of value to our customers using digital assets to move money more efficiently.
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