XRP, PEPE, and WRLD Are This Week's Top Crypto Gainers

XRP (XRP) – $0.65,  Up 8.7% in the last 7 days. XRP is an asset tied to the Ripple ecosystem. Ripple is a payment company, with an attached network token that aims to compete with the cross-border banking payment protocol SWIFT.

Top Gainers (7 days)

The cryptocurrency market has seen a largely green week of price action, with most assets in the top 100 by market capitalization posting gains. XRP is leading the pack with a surge of over 8.7%, followed by Large Cap and Medium Cap cryptocurrencies that are also posting impressive gains.

Here's a closer look at the top gainers over the last 7 days, according to data from CoinGecko.

Mega Cap (Market Cap >US$10 Billion)

XRP (XRP) – $0.65, Up 8.7% in the last 7 days

XRP is an asset tied to the Ripple ecosystem. Ripple is a payment company, with an attached network token that aims to compete with the cross-border banking payment protocol SWIFT. XRP functions as the native transaction token of Ripple’s XRP Ledger. The XRP ledger is a decentralized, public blockchain focused on low transaction costs and high throughput.

The XRP price pump follows a surge in open interest. Open interest (OI) is the total number of outstanding derivative contracts for an asset—such as options or futures—that have not been settled. Since the 7th of September, when the price of XRP was US$0.51, data from Coinglass reports a sudden spike in OI, this suggests more traders are making big bets on XRP backing the asset to perform well in current market conditions.

Large Cap (Market Cap between US$1.5billion – US$10 billion)

PEPE (PEPE) – US$0.000011, Up ~39.1% in the last 7 days

PEPE is a popular memecoin project that has branding inspired by the legendary comic ‘Pepe the Frog’ who has inspired memes like ‘Feels good man’ and ‘sad Pepe’.

Memecoin projects take their inspiration from memes – the cultural ‘inside’ jokes that are instantly recognizable to their targeted communities. These meme coins base their marketing and communications around memes to take advantage of their immediate relatability – with meme culture ensuring there is a ready-made marketing strategy and audience to connect with.

PEPE’s rally appears to be a part of a wider memecoin rally that also includes Dogecoin(DOGE), Dogwifhat (WIF), and Bonk (BONK).

Medium Cap (Market Cap between US500 million – US$1.5 billion)

Worldcoin (WRLD) – US$0.017, up ~12.3% in the last 7 days

WRLD, the native token of the Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin, has enjoyed a bullish green week of price action. Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the largest generative AI projects in the world that built Chat-GPT and Dall-e.

Worldcoin pitches that it can authenticate user data without storing the data or relying on a centralized authority. Users must scan their iris using a piece of hardware exclusively built by Worldcoin called the ‘Orb’. Compatible apps that would like to connect with users can plug into the Orb network to make solutions specific for users and avoid possible red flags like bots.

In the last week, Worldcoin has announced that it will be expanding into three new countries — Guatemala, Malaysia, and Poland. The project’s product World ID was already available in Argentina, Chile, Austria, Mexico, and the United States. World ID is a digital passport solution that allows users to verify online accounts using the Worldcoin technology solution.