Thanks to XRP, altcoins have started displacing Bitcoin

• Altcoin volume dominance across exchanges climbed to a four-month high.
• With increased profit-taking underway, XRP saw a decline in accumulation.

Investors have shifted their attention away from Bitcoin [BTC] following the Ripple ruling, sending altcoin volume dominance to a four-month high, research firm Kaiko noted in a new report.

Read Ripple’s [XRP] Price Prediction 2023-24

On 13 July, Judge Analisa Torress, through her ruling, put to rest the debate on whether Ripple’s sale of its XRP tokens in 2022 amounted to the sale of an “unregistered security.”

Across all top cryptocurrency exchanges, Kaiko found that,

“BTC volume dominance has slipped 8% since the start of July following the Ripple ruling, which instantly caused altcoin markets to rally.”

On the top 25 centralized exchanges, the leading coin’s volume dominance was less than 30%, marking its lowest level since April. 

Source: Kaiko

Kaiko further noted that there has been an uptick in altcoin trading on offshore exchanges to the detriment of BTC. The report stated:

“Offshore exchanges have experienced a more extreme drop in BTC trading activity, partially due to a spike in South Korean altcoin volume. Since the start of 2023, BTC dominance has fallen by 20%.”

Similarly, on U.S-based crypto exchanges, altcoins have seen increased trading activity. According to Kaiko, this suggested that

“Regulatory crackdown has not yet dampened demand.”

Source: Kaiko

The shift in demand from BTC toward altcoins was also confirmed in James Butterfill’s latest report on last week’s flows into digital asset investment products. According to the research analyst, while BTC experienced outflows of $13 million last week, leading alt Ethereum [ETH] and other alts such as XRP, Solana [SOL], Uniswap [UNI], and Polygon [MATIC] all posted inflows. 

Regarding available liquidity in the altcoin market, Kaiko found that there has been a slight uptick in altcoin liquidity since the beginning of July. 

“Since the start of July, 1% market depth for the top 10 altcoins by market cap has increased by ~$20mn.”

Source: Kaiko

All good things must come to an end

An assessment of XRP’s on-chain activity revealed that the price uptick in the past few weeks might be nearing its end. At press time, XRP exchanged hands at $0.6877, with a 7% drop in value in the last week, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

How much are 1,10,100 XRPs worth today?

The price decline is attributable to a shortfall in new demand and the count of daily active addresses that have traded the token in the last week. According to data from Santiment, XRP’s daily active addresses peaked at a high of 29,937 on 19 July and have since declined by 17%.

Likewise, the count of new addresses created to trade the altcoin has dwindled in the last week. Per Santiment, this has since seen a 46% drop.

Source:Santiment

While some accumulation occurred on a daily chart, buying pressure had begun to lose momentum. This suggested that traders have taken to distributing their XRP holdings to log profits. 

With an MVRV of 86% at press time, holders would be at an average loss of approximately 14% if they were to sell their XRP tokens at the current price. This means that the press time market value is 86% of the average price at which the tokens were acquired, resulting in a negative profit.

Source: Santiment