Silver's market cap has risen to over $500 billion, even though cryptocurrencies surpassed precious metals just two months ago. Silver made a remarkable comeback against Bitcoin in 2024, becoming the 8th largest asset in terms of market capitalization after losing that spot in March. Bitcoin is currently the 9th largest asset in the world.
Gold also stood out, rising 22.4% since February 13, according to Trading Economics. Its current market capitalization is $16.4 trillion. Industry experts are divided on what will happen after the price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high in March. Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair has previously noted that Bitcoin tends to double within a few months of reaching new highs, especially near halving events.
Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, said Bitcoin remains in a "correction phase," with prices expected to rise to between $55,000 and $75,000 towards the end of the second quarter. Many industry experts point to spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and the post-halving impact as the main reasons for these high predictions.
The XRPL recorded 251.39 million on-chain transactions during the first quarter of 2024. Additionally, with it the number of XRPL transactions more than doubled from the fourth quarter of 2023 to the end of first quarter of 2024. The average transaction cost has also seen significant changes, with it more than doubling initially and then almost halving.
According to Ripple's market report for Q1 2024 on May 17th, it was further noted that average trading costs decreased by 45%, to approximately $0.000856. Meanwhile, the distribution of XRPL trading volume among cryptocurrency exchanges remained steady in the first quarter, with Binance, Bybit, and Upbit accounting for more than 70% of the total traded volume.
The report also covers the ongoing litigation between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple. The SEC filed a lawsuit in December 2020, alleging that Ripple's IPO of XRPL was an offering of unregistered securities. Ripple stated that the parties are currently awaiting a judge's final decision, which is expected in the coming months.
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has no plans to delist Tether (USDT) in Europe at the moment despite a recent report claiming the firm was actively reviewing the decision to remain legally compliant. The firm will continue to follow all legal requirements even those that disagree with Greenberg iterated.
A May 17 article in Bloomberg reported that Kraken is "actively evaluating" its plans to comply with the European Union's upcoming Cryptoassets Market in Crypto Assets (MiCA). “We are absolutely prepared for all contingencies, including situations where listing a particular token like USDT is simply untenable,” said Kraken’s global head of regulatory strategy at the time. said Marcus Hughes.
Binance announced plans to make a similar decision last September — citing a need to comply with MiCA — but the firm hasn’t followed through with those plans yet. Kraken recently ended support for the Monero privacy token XMR $131 for its Belgium and Ireland customers in April.
