Ripple (XRP) has replaced Circle’s (USDC) position as the fifth member of the global weighted index, as announced by the Hong Kong Virtual Asset Consortium (HKVAC) on October 13. HKVAC was designed to reflect a wide range of investable cryptocurrencies.
Ripple’s Success!
Before determining the top five rankings, HKVAC evaluates criteria such as regulation, risk, and trust regarding assets. Recently, USDC was among the top five along with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), and Tether (USDT). However, XRP’s gains and Circle’s earlier losses contributed to the change.
Since HKVAC considers regulation and performance as criteria, it can be concluded that Ripple’s partial victory over the US SEC helped XRP make it to the list. Additionally, the token’s 41.50% increase since the beginning of the year was noteworthy.
USDC has maintained stability against the US dollar, but its connections to challenges faced by traditional institutions have truly affected it. In March, Circle announced that $3.3 billion of its reserves were held in the troubled Silicoin Valley Bank (SVB).
Stablecoin Dominance!
As a result of the announcement, USDC briefly dropped to $0.86 but managed to regain its dollar peg a few minutes later. However, one of the areas that USDC failed to revive is market capitalization. XRP’s rise has reversed not only its dominance over USDT but also USDC’s market value.
At the time of writing, XRP’s market value was $25.94 billion, while USDC’s market value was $25.12 billion. These figures confirm that there has been more XRP in circulation than USDC for some time. According to Network Growth, both USDC and XRP have recently experienced declines. At the time of writing, XRP’s network growth was 286, while USDC’s was much higher at 2278.
Network Growth measures the number of new addresses interacting with a network. An increase in this metric may indicate a large number of transactions involving new participants. A decrease in Network Growth may indicate a decrease in activity. Therefore, USDC’s network growth surpassing XRP’s may not necessarily be evidence of Circle’s better performance.
