South Korean trading volumes supported an outperformance in XRP, as a CoinDesk analysis noted earlier this week.
Jan 2, 2025, 8: 02 a.m. UTC
Crypto majors zoomed higher in the past 24 hours as the market entered a widely expected bullish year, with bitcoin (BTC) inching above $95,000 to shake off losses from last week.
A CoinDesk analysis from Tuesday flagged unusually high trading volumes for XRP stemming from South Korean exchanges, which has historically acted as a harbinger for price volatility with a bias to the upside.
XRP surged 11% to lead growth among majors as of Thursday, led by $1.3 billion worth of trading volumes on Korea-focused exchange UpBit.
Among other majors, Cardano’s ADA, Solana’s SOL and Chainlink’s LINK added as much as 8%. Ether (ETH) and BNB Chain’s BNB rose 3%, while memecoins dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) added 5%.
The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market capitalization, minus stablecoins, rose 5.8%.
The anticipation of a more crypto-friendly administration under incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, who has made campaign promises for crypto friendly policies and a strategic bitcoin reserve, is largely fuelling optimism for 2025.
The Bitcoin halving event in 2024 historically led to a bullish trend in the following year due to the reduced supply of new tokens entering the market. The broader crypto market also tends to follow a four-year cycle influenced by the halvings — with memecoins, AI and real-world assets expected to be market leaders.
Predictions aren’t limited to mere cycles, however. Firms such as Galaxy Research predict large-scale institutional, corporate, and nation-state adoption in bitcoin investments, with at least five Nasdaq-100 companies and five nation-states expected to adopt the asset.
The firm targets a $185,000 level for bitcoin and $5,500 for ether (ETH) this year.
Singapore-based QCP Capital mirrors that sentiment: “For 2025, while optimism surrounds crypto-friendly regulations post-Trump inauguration, we think the key catalyst may come in January as institu