XRP, the third largest digital asset in terms of market capitalization, has been “pumping hard” recently – as eToro’s senior market analyst, Mati Greenspan pointed out via Twitter.

In his detailed Twitter thread, Greenspan wrote: “While the rest of the crypto market is stalling, $XRP is pumping hard this morning.” He added that XRP “went quiet” from December 11th, 2018 to late January 2019. However, the digital asset’s price has started to recover “with a vengeance” since January 26th, Greenspan noted.

According to the experienced analyst’s observations: “$XRP volumes have been dominated by Bitcoin and Tether $USDT over the last six months. However, we can see that dynamic tapering off in the last few days.”

Commenting on XRP’s price, Twitter user “Macro CryptoRevolution” (@MarcoCryptoRevo) mentioned that “rumors drive the price” in the digital asset market. He predicted that the performance of XRP and bitcoin (BTC), the flagship cryptocurrency, would be correlated for the “next few years.” He remarked:  

XRP for the banks and conservatives. Bitcoin for the free thinking people! #BTC Future.

At press time, XRP is trading at $0.3403 as its price has surged by nearly 9% in the past 24 hours – according to CryptoCompare data. The market capitalization of XRP tokens currently stands at just over $13.7 billion.

Giant Omani Financial Institution Joins RippleNet

Ripple Labs, the San Francisco-based fintech firm that has supported the development of XRP,  recently announced that Oman’s second-largest financial institution, BankDhofar has joined RippleNet, which is Ripple’s global payment network.

Navin Gupta, Ripple’s managing director for the Asia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, shared a press release (via Twitter) which revealed that the American fintech’s “bi-directional messaging and instant settlement features” would be used by BankDhofar to process international payments in a quick, secure, and cost-effective manner.

XRP Is The “Number One Cryptoasset”

Expressing his confidence in Ripple’s suite of financial products, including XRP, Yoshitaka Kitao, the CEO of SBI Holdings, a Tokyo-based financial services firm that generates an average of $200 billion in annual revenue, recently remarked (translated from Japanese): 

XRP is the number one crypto asset.

Yoshitaka also claimed that bitcoin has “no fundamental value” which is why he thinks the flagship cryptocurrency’s price will eventually go down to “zero.”

Earlier this month, the SBI Group had published its latest financial report (covering a 9-month period ending on December 31st, 2018) in which it noted that XRP was the first cryptocurrency that was integrated into R3’s Corda Settler, which is “an application purpose-built to allow for payment obligations raised on the Corda blockchain platform to be made through any of the world’s payment systems, both traditional and blockchain-based.”