XRP held fourth place as the Ripple ruling rally persisted

XRP remained the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by reported market capitalization on July 16, 2023, preserving most of the extraordinary repricing that followed a divided federal-court ruling three days earlier.

CoinMarketCap’s historical snapshot listed XRP at $0.7469, with a reported market capitalization of $39.24 billion and $3.94 billion in rolling 24-hour volume. The snapshot showed a 4.71% gain over 24 hours and a 59.40% gain over seven days. XRP ranked behind bitcoin, ether and tether but ahead of BNB, whose reported capitalization was $37.82 billion.

Those figures establish what one market aggregator displayed for July 16. They are not an official closing auction or a consolidated regulated-market settlement. Cryptoassets trade continuously across venues, and the surviving snapshot does not clearly identify its observation time, exchange weighting or historical volume methodology.

A legal ruling drove the repricing

The catalyst arrived on July 13, 2023, when Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted parts of competing summary-judgment motions in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against Ripple Labs.

The result was divided rather than a blanket declaration about every XRP transaction. The court found that Ripple’s institutional sales constituted offers and sales of investment contracts. It concluded that Ripple’s programmatic exchange sales did not satisfy the expectation-of-profits element of the Howey test on the evidentiary record before it. The court also found that certain other distributions did not involve an investment of money.

The opinion said XRP, as a digital token, was not itself necessarily an investment contract. It did not decide whether every secondary-market XRP transaction fell outside securities law, and unresolved claims remained. Describing the decision as an unqualified victory for either side would therefore overstate what the court had determined by July 16.

Exchange access returned quickly

The market reaction was reinforced by restored U.S. trading access. Kraken announced on July 13 that XRP funding and trading were live for eligible United States residents, subject to its stated geographic and product conditions. Coinbase’s support record said it relisted XRP at 5:35 p.m. Eastern on July 13, while excluding customers in New York and several non-U.S. jurisdictions from that support.

Those actions mattered because major U.S. exchanges had suspended XRP trading after the SEC filed its case in December 2020. Relisting reduced an important access constraint and signaled how platforms initially interpreted the programmatic-sales portion of the ruling. It did not amount to regulatory approval of XRP or immunize exchanges, issuers or traders from other legal requirements.

The July 16 snapshot in context

XRP’s $3.94 billion of reported 24-hour volume on July 16 remained substantial, although it was below bitcoin’s $8.52 billion and tether’s $17.51 billion in the same CoinMarketCap snapshot. Bitcoin was listed at $30,249.13, down 0.15% over 24 hours and up 0.26% over seven days. XRP’s markedly different seven-day performance supports an interpretation that the move was asset-specific and closely associated with the ruling and relistings, rather than simply part of a comparable bitcoin rally.

That interpretation is supported by chronology and relative performance, but it is not proof of motive for every trade. Aggregate price and volume data cannot separate legal reassessment from speculation, short covering, market-maker positioning or other flows.

By July 16, the defensible conclusion was narrow but consequential: the court decision had materially changed XRP’s market valuation and U.S. trading availability, and the repricing had persisted through the weekend. The snapshot did not establish that the legal dispute was finished or that the new valuation would endure.