XRP jumped 56% to reach $0.50944 — hitting its highest level since December 22. The price surge followed a campaign by Redditers to buy and hold the digital token, leading to push XRP to its highest level after one month of price plummets.

The current price surge is XRP’s biggest single-day gain in three years. Analysts believe that it will keep going up. In an interview with CoinDesk, Alex Melikhov, CEO of Equilibrium said: “XRP’s next target is $0.80, which, if breached, would allow a rally to $1 and higher.” 

In December 2020, XRP’s price saw an immense decrease, after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Ripple’s CEO. The SEC alleged Ripple’s labs two executives of illegally selling the cryptocurrency to fund Ripple's operations. Consequently, XRP lost more than 70% of its value following the news.

However, to bring the token back to the trading table, Redditers launched a campaign similar to that of Gamestop (NASDAQ: GME) pushing the digital token’s price from $0.28 to $0.51 per XRP. Redditers made a Telegram group called Buy & Hold XRP on Saturday. The Telegram group (t.me/pumpxrpofficial) had over 200,000 members in 24 hours after its creation. 

Did Redditers really move the market?

Nevertheless, some analysts believe that the Telegram group wasn’t the only reason behind the price rise. In a tweet on Saturday, cryptocurrency analyst CredbilityCrypto said: “Popular YouTuber @KEEMSTAR (5.8M subs) with 2.8M Twitter followers dropped a quarter mill on $XRP at .27 and clearly garnered the attention of millions of his followers and price doesn’t budge but you think a telegram group with 60k members is what caused the pump today.”

“24H volume on XRP on Sunday was over $26 billion. Even if each of the groups’ members dropped $5,000 on XRP, that equates to 2% of the total daily volume. Let’s be rational here – no Telegram group is pumping the 5th largest coin in the space,” CredibilityCrypto added in a follow-up post.

XRP healed from the SEC charges collateral damage

Now with the latest XRP price surge — the cryptocurrency healed from the SEC charges. The cryptocurrency added $13 billion to its market capitalization. Additionally, XRP is now the 3rd most valuable digital token with a market cap of more than $26 billion — more than the currency’s market cap before the SEC lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Ripple labs commented on the SEC’s allegations. The company said that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network both recognized XRP as a digital currency.

In conclusion, Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse said in a tweet: “Our defense begins today. Innovation is on trial, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with our partners & the community to defend it. Together, with appropriate regulatory oversight, we can modernize outdated laws that clearly aren’t working to protect consumers and ensure orderly markets.” 

Ripple's pre-trial is set for February 22.