By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – The global cryptocurrency market capitalisation has fallen back below $2 trillion, currently standing around $1.89 trillion after a pullback in some major coins over the last day.
Bitcoin has been relatively stable but failed to break back above $60,000 despite some positive catalysts in the latest week.
Online payments company PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) recently announced that it would allow users to pay merchants on its platform in some cryptocurrencies. However, that doesn’t mean that the merchants would be accepting Bitcoin, rather that PayPal would act as a middle man and convert the Bitcoin themselves, before paying the merchant in fiat currency.
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) has also recently begun accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles and other companies - from Visa (NYSE:V) to Square (NYSE:SQ) - have further progressed their plans for digital assets.
Smaller Coins
Although Bitcoin has remained relatively stable, the last week has seen some dramatic gains for some of the other larger cryptocurrencies.
The price of XRP hit its highest level in three years with the cryptocurrency almost doubling in a week before a pullback in the last 24 hours. There are various theories for the price increase, including news that XRP’s parent company Ripple acquired a stake in Asian payments company Tranglo. The acquisition could provide Ripple with improved infrastructure for its platform in the growing south-east Asian market.
The rally comes amid an ongoing lawsuit from the US SEC which had weighed on the price in late 2020. However, this week, Coindesk reported that Ripple had won the right to examine the SEC’s internal communications on how it determines whether a cryptocurrency is a security, which has been described as an early victory for Ripple in its case.
The second largest cryptocurrency by market-cap, Ethereum, has also had a stellar seven days, breaking above $2,000 before paring back over the last 24 hours. The recent boom in non-fungible token (NFT) sales has supported Ethereum, with the artist Beeple selling a piece of digital art at Christie’s auction house for $69 million, the third most expensive artwork by a living artist. The buyer paid for the NFT artwork using Ethereum.