What's Driving Token Prices? August 14, 2024

XRP (+10%) - Last week, payments-focused cryptocurrency Ripple was handed a verdict in the SEC’s suit against the project. A judge ordered Ripple to pay a $125M fine and banned the project from conducting future securities violations. Although the SEC is expected to appeal the decision, the decision is seen as a win for Ripple as the fine is far less than the $1B that the SEC was originally seeking. In a separate announcement, Ripple began testing its stablecoin on Ethereum and on its own blockchain, the XRP ledger. The stablecoin, RLUSD, is currently in private beta and not open for public investment at this time but aims to ultimately compete with Tether’s USDT ($116B AUM) and Circle’s UDSC ($34B in AUM).
MKR (+15%) - A proposal is up on the Maker forum to discontinue WBTC as a collateral type (WBTC accounts for ~10% of DAI's supply). The proposal comes after BitGo announced it would change who owned and operated WBTC. It's now moving from only the custodian's control to a joint venture, "BiT Global" which is comprised of BitGo, BiT Global and Justin Sun/Tron ecosystem. The proposal points to how transitioning TrueUSD to Tron's control led to reduced transparency and reporting, voicing concerns about the backing of WBTC in the future. The proposal has had mixed results with many saying it is too drastic and if the same logic were applied, Ethena's USDe should also be discontinued. Will see what happens here but the proposal and Tron's involvement in WBTC are causing quite the stir. Finally, Grayscale announced yesterday that it would launch a private trust for MakerDao.
SUI (+42%) - Layer-1 smart contract platform Sui saw a surge in interest and price this week on the back of some positive growth and continued excitement around the project. The MoveVM-based L1 saw its TVL increase 67% this week to $756M which could be attributed to Suilend, the fourth largest protocol on the chain, running a deposit promotion program. Over the weekend, Raoul Paul, the CEO of Real Vision, was tweeting positively about Sui (although it should be noted he sits on the board of the Sui Foundation) which further increased mentions of Sui across social media. Finally, last week, Grayscale announced it would launch a Sui Trust product for accredited investors to invest in the token.

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