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- A new report from the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA) shows that investor numbers in Japan have decreased for XRP and increased for Bitcoin.
- XRP was once more popular than Bitcoin, but due to the stagnating performance many XRP Hodlers have switched to other Altcoins and Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has been accepted as a legitimate means of payment in Japan for several years and is one of the country’s most popular cryptocurrencies according to the latest surveys by the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA). According to new surveys by the market analyst Yuya Hasegawa of the FSA licensed stock exchange BitBank, XRP Hodler‘s investor numbers have continued to decline.
Ripple (XRP) loses leadership position to Bitcoin
In 2018, the digital asset XRP dominated the Japanese market with a market share of 51.36 % and was well ahead of Bitcoin (34.57 %) at that time, as the following chart shows. Hasegawa describes that XRP has lost many followers in recent months due to its rather poor performance. According to the article published on June 20, Bitcoin is the new market leader with a share of 51.74%, XRP comes to 27.54% and Ethereum to 9.48%.
The analyst states that from January 2019 to today Bitcoin has increased in price by 152.79% and XRP by only 16.81%. He goes on to say that it is not only the performance that is responsible for declining user numbers, but also the great media attention for Bitcoin as a safe haven and anchor of value in difficult times like the current corona crisis.
Ethereum has always shown a strong correlation with Bitcoin and the release of Ethereum 2.0 is imminent. According to Hasegawa, this means that investors’ attention will be focused primarily on Bitcoin and Ethereum:
Ethereum also recorded high monthly traded value but it historically has high correlation with bitcoin and it is expected to go through a major network update, Serenity, sometime during Q3 of this year. Therefore, in a way, the popular narratives that drove the market for the past year or so have not exactly been shedding strong lights on Ripple’s XRP.
However, the analyst predicts that interest will soon rise again once the current crisis is overcome and investors can once again use their money in a targeted manner to trade on the market:
As movements across borders are strictly limited, the demand for cross-border payments and remittances have an opportunity to grow. XRP’s issuer, Ripple, already has a scalable infrastructure to implement fast and cheap cross-border remittances, and its use cases are quietly growing in some parts of the world.
Ripple joins Open Payments Coalition (OPC) to drive adoption
Ripple has joined the Open Payments Coalition (OPC) to introduce PayID as a universal payment identifier. PayID is an open and free standard that aims to increase interoperability between payment networks. It is intended to replace complex account numbers with simple designations and thus significantly increase usability and adaptation.
