XRP was one of the lone bright spots in a sea of red among cryptocurrencies on Monday, with many investors still skittish after last week’s lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Ripple-linked cryptocurrency was up 1.5% over the past day, to about 51 cents, edging out Bitcoin’s minuscule 0.25% gain and Ether’s loss of 0.42%. Over the past seven days, XRP has fared better than the top two cryptocurrencies, down 3% compared with 3.4% and 6.9%, respectively, for Bitcoin and Ether.
Last week, as some of the most popular investment products tracking cryptocurrencies diverted millions of dollars from Bitcoin and Ethereum, XRP saw inflows of about half-a-million dollars, according to a report by CoinShares.
XRP was not named among the cryptocurrencies listed as securities in the SEC’s lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance last week. Others, such as Cardano, Solana, and Polygon, were mentioned and experienced price slumps, as did most of the overall market.
Another factor boosting XRP is the University of Toronto’s announcement that it plans to start an independent XRP ledger validator through Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative. In 2018, the company said it would invest $50 million in universities to advance research and development related to the blockchain. The University of Toronto is the largest in Canada, and its participation is a boon for Ripple, which also has partnered with two other Canadian universities, according to CoinDesk.
Ripple is entangled in its own lawsuit with the SEC that’s dragged on for 2 1/2 years but may conclude soon. The SEC in 2020 claimed XRP was a security and charged Ripple and two of its executives with conducting a $1.3 billion offering of unregistered securities.
The Ripple lawsuit has become a rallying cry for much of the crypto space that’s lent support and tried to help the company prevail over the SEC. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in May that the court fight with the SEC could be over in “weeks not months.”
Although it took a hit last week, the overall crypto market cap was up 0.14% over the past day as it struggled to retain its trillion dollar asset class designation, according to CoinMarketCap.
Meanwhile, stocks climbed ahead of the release of May’s inflation data, a key metric in the Federal Reserve’s decision on whether to continue or pause interest rate hikes later this week.