XRP price weekly analysis 18 July: A big week of gains follows bullish comments and regulatory decisions

XRP has recorded some of its biggest recent gains as the bearish funk of recent weeks looks to be lifting.

Key takeaways

• A big week of gains for XRP.
• Traders have been out in force, driving the price up.
• Regulatory decisions in India and bullish comments in Japan may be giving the market more confidence around XRP.

After spending most of the past seven days trading in a tight band around the $0.44 mark, XRP took a couple of big steps forward. The first bumped the price up to around $0.48 before a second, steeper rise brought the price up to the $0.51 level, where XRP held for about 24 hours.

But, unlike some of the short-lived price rises we've seen over the last couple of weeks, traders were out in force and staying active. The 24-hour trading volumes were at lows of around $154 million while the price sat in that $0.44 area before rising to almost $390 million. That kind of high plateau has been rare recently although there have been some brief periods where volumes have touched on these levels.

Over all, it's been a good week for those who picked up XRP during the recent lows. The market's third most valuable coin by market capitalisation has gained about 8% over the week.

Although there are signs of a downward correction at the time of writing, there's some optimism out there for XRP.

A break past $0.54 could bring $0.60 into play according to John Isige from FXStreet. But that analysis is a few hours old, and since it was published, we've seen a red candle lit under XRP with the price dipping from $0.51 back to $0.48. But there are no signs of another increase.

That tells you a lot about how volatile things are and how the market can change pretty quickly. That has me thinking that a relatively small pool of traders is still exerting significant influence over the market.

It's possible that the increased activity and increased value for XRP comes on the back of regulatory decisions in India. NewsBTC reports that a decision by the "Supreme Bank to stand by RBI’s decision paves way for XRP to dominate Indian cryptocurrency space". And a similar statement, made in Japan saying "the use and adoption of XRP will be inevitable in the future" might also be helping to boost XRP's credibility.

As I've said several times before, there are two key issues that will impact the long-term prospects of the cryptocurrency markets: regulatory decisions and the entry of resource-rich institutional investors. The technical bona fides of the thousands of cryptocurrencies on the market will come in question under those two lenses.

XRP's position as a banking instrument makes them one of the coins to watch in light of those rising influences.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds BTC, EOS, ETH, XLM, ETN, LTC, ADA and XRP.

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