The Bitcoin Revolution Enters a New Phase: Canaccord Genuity Advises Action.

• Altcoins XRP and XLM experienced a surge, outperforming Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• The U.S. federal court’s ruling in favor of Ripple fuels debate about the need for a specific legal framework for digital assets.

New Leaders in the Crypto Marathon: XRP and XLM

In a fluctuating crypto world, two altcoins, XRP and XLM, have shown remarkable resilience, rising in double digits and outpacing their heavyweight counterparts, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Stellar Lumens’ XLM token, hailing from the blockchain-based payment platform, escalated over the past 24 hours to trade above 15 cents, marking an 18% increase. The token has been struggling to match its peak of last week when its price doubled, echoing the broad crypto market surge triggered by Ripple’s partial legal victory against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Similarly, Ripple’s XRP, sitting as the third-largest crypto by market capitalization, has seen its value climb by 6.8%, surpassing the 82 cent mark. The CoinDesk Market Index, encapsulating the performance of the crypto market, reported an upward trend of 0.5%.

Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO Network, links the Wednesday spike in XRP to the continued anticipation about the previous week’s U.S. federal court ruling. This decision established that XRP token sales on exchanges and through algorithms did not qualify as investment contracts, prompting exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp to relist XRP and causing a ripple effect in investments, trading volumes, and futures contracts open interest.

Emerging Legal Landscape for Crypto

Even though Ripple celebrated a partial victory last week in its ongoing case against the SEC, this ruling left some fundamental issues unresolved. The legal ambiguity has opened up a debate about the creation of a specialized ‘legal regime’ to acknowledge the unique characteristics of digital assets.

Preston Byrne, a partner at the law firm Brown Rudnick, expresses the need for a law that recognizes crypto’s “self-sovereign nature”. He suggests that the U.S. Congress should enact regulation considering these unique attributes while also enhancing protections for investors. He affirms that crypto isn’t a security in the traditional sense and points out that people often use it in applications which provide useful software.

While this recent ruling provided Ripple with a short-term legal relief, it didn’t clarify the long-standing issues that crypto organizations face while operating in uncertain regulatory landscapes. Byrne argues that there is a need for a legal framework specifically designed for crypto, providing certainty and protection to investors, issuers, and users alike.

This episode has signaled that the legal and regulatory future of cryptocurrencies remains a complex and evolving issue, impacting crypto’s day-to-day market performance, as demonstrated by the recent upswing of XRP and XLM.