XRP surges 15%, as bitcoin and ether trade near record highs as Tesla, BNY Mellon and Mastercard warm to cryptocurrencies Currency News | Financial and business news

The price of XRP surged on Friday as interest in cryptocurrencies surged after Elon Musk’s Tesla clawed back $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and BNY Mellon and Mastercard took action to use the tokens digital.

XRP, the cryptocurrency of the Ripple network, rose 15%, before falling slightly. It was up 11% to $ 0.5987 by 9 a.m., according to Bitstamp.

The price of bitcoin was 1.4% higher at $ 48,129 on the Bitstamp exchange, just after a record high of over $ 48,300 reached on Thursday.

Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla revealed on Monday that it had purchased $ 1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and planned to start accepting it as a form of payment.

The announcement sent bitcoin to an all-time high of over $ 48,000. The coin has hovered below $ 40,000 for much of the previous two weeks.

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Bitcoin hit a new high above $ 48,300 on Thursday after BNY Mellon and Mastercard both warmed to cryptocurrencies.

Mastercard has announced that it will allow merchants to accept certain cryptocurrencies on its network from the end of the year. And Bank of New York Mellon has said it will issue, hold and transfer bitcoin for customers in the future.

The announcements appear to have boosted other crypto assets such as Ripple’s XRP and Ethereum Ether.

Ether, the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network, was roughly stable at $ 1,793 on Bitstamp on Friday morning. But it was not far from a record of over $ 1,800 reached earlier in the week.

However, the cryptocurrency dogecoin “ Meme ” fell around 7% to $ 0.068.

“It seems like [XRP network] Ripple, like many others, is riding the bitcoin wave, ”said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at foreign exchange firm Oanda.

“Although he’s been a lot better performing so far today. He has a lot of lost ground to make up, so maybe that can explain why he’s being targeted.

“There doesn’t seem to be much else behind the moves, which should always be a concern, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make a lot more wins, as we’ve seen so often. . “

Ripple network cryptocurrency is extremely volatile. XRP soared and collapsed in early February when a buy and hold program run by Reddit appeared to collapse after the price hit $ 0.74.

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