Ripple: Checking XRP’s reaction to XRPL’s new multi-year low
- The monthly transaction volume on XRPL is at a new low.
- Trading volume on XRP’s futures market has fallen to its lowest since October.
Monthly transaction volume on XRP Ledger (XRPL), as measured in XRP, has plummeted to a multi-year low, according to The Block Data dashboard.
With less than ten days till the end of the month, the total value moved in XRP transactions on the open-source and decentralized blockchain has amounted to 12 billion XRP, representing a 65% decline from the 34 billion XRP recorded in February.
This decline comes after the network recorded an all-time high of 691 billion XRP in monthly transaction volume in January.
As earlier reported, this milestone occurred in spite of an attempted hack on cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex on 14th January to transfer 25.6 billion XRP tokens.
According to data tracked by The Block, the last time XRPL’s monthly transaction volume was less than 12 billion XRP was before 2020.
User activity on the blockchain in March
The low transaction volume recorded on XRPL since the beginning of March has occurred despite the uptick in the daily number of new addresses created on the blockchain.
XRPL’s user activity tracked by The Block using a seven-day moving average showed that the daily count of unique addresses that appeared for the first time in a transaction has increased by 68% since the beginning of the month.
Due to the spike in new demand, transaction fees have also increased. In fact, as of 7th March, the average transaction fee on XRPL climbed to a year-to-date (YTD) high of 0.0037 XRP. This represented a 131% spike from the 0.0016 XRP charged as the average transaction fee on the network on 1st January.
However, while the network recorded an influx of new users during the month, its daily transaction count has remained significantly low. On 7th March, the daily number of transactions on XRPL cratered to a YTD low of 686,000.
XRP’s futures market witnesses a pullback
At press time, XRP traded at $0.61. According to CoinMarketCap, its value declined by 3% in the past 24 hours.
Realistic or not, here’s XRP’s market cap in BTC terms
After the daily trading volume in the token’s futures market peaked at a five-month high of $1.09 billion on 12th March, it initiated a decline and has since dropped by 6%, according to data.
The period has been marked by a corresponding decline in open interest, suggesting an increase in the number of trades exited daily.