Ripple breaks downward price trend after DCEX announcement

Ripple broke the downward trend of its rival cryptocurrencies on Wednesday after DCEX, a San Francisco-based exchange, said it would become the first to use Ripple’s XRP token as its base currency.

Ripple higher on Wednesday but bitcoin and Stellar’s lumen are the best performers during July

DCEX announced on Tuesday that its trading platform would be powered by AlphaPoint and that trading would commence over the coming weeks.

Transaction speed

The announcement from DCEX said: “XRP blockchain transactions typically settle in under four seconds, allowing for faster multi-exchange strategies and providing a speed advantage over other money movement options.”

Ripple climbed nearly 4% during morning trade in Europe, bucking the downward trend of most of its rivals.

While many cryptocurrencies lost ground during July, the beginning of the month had looked rather promising. A number of crypto’s managed some monthly gains, nevertheless.

Stellar lumen

Among them was Stellar’s lumen after a string of partnership announcements for Stellar.org, including with payments and remittances company TransferTo. Stellar also received Sharia financial law compliance certification which means it can enter the potentially-lucrative Islamic finance market.

Meanwhile, the top of the bunch by market capitalisation, bitcoin has had a turbulent month. It reached the $8,500 mark for the first time in two months, and managed to find support at the $8,000 for around eight-straight trading sessions, before tumbling on Wednesday.

Price moves

Here are the price movements of the top 10 on Wednesday, 1 August, with July’s monthly moves in brackets. Prices taken at 11am London time:

• Bitcoin -6% at $7,591 (+18.6%)
• Ethereum -5.4% at $422.79 (-6.5%)
• Ripple +2.1% at $0.45 (-3%)
• Bitcoin cash -4.2% at $761.06 (+1.8%)
• Eos -0.5% at $7.26 (-10.6%)
• Stellar lumens +0.4% at $0.27 (+42%)
• Litecoin -3.1% at $ 77.81 (-4.3%)
• Cardano -2.1% at $0.14 (+2.2%)
• Iota -3.4% at $0.93 (-6.9%)
• Tether unchanged at $1 (unchanged)