XRP climbed 5.5% to $2.19 in the last 24 hours after a trio of catalysts converged to help the cryptocurrency outperform the wider cryptocurrency market.

One of the catalysts was launch of XRP micro futures on Robinhood. The contracts offer traders more flexibility to bet on the cryptocurrency’s future price direction or hedge current positions given their smaller size.

Regulatory fog also thinned. On Friday, Ripple withdrew its cross-appeal in its long-running U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit. The SEC sued Ripple back in 2020 over its XRP sales, alleging these violated securities laws. The SEC is expected to drop its own appeal, leaving last year’s ruling, ordering Ripple to pay a $125 million civil penalty to the SEC, intact. The move could lift a lid that had kept some investors on the sidelines.

On-chain data rounded out the bullish setup. The XRP Ledger logged over a 1.1 million active addresses over the past week according to crypto analyst Ali Martinez, who cited Glassnode data.

XRP’s rise saw it outperform the wider crypto market, with the broader CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rising 1.7% in the last 24 hours.

As traditional gold markets heat up, crypto investors are following suit—flocking to tokenized versions of the precious metal that offer both price exposure and digital flexibility.

Gold-backed cryptocurrencies like Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) have risen 24.15% and 23.7% respectively year-to-date to new all-time highs above $3,300, roughly matching the performance of spot gold. Their prices have since receded slightly to $3,265 and $3,244, respectively.

While gold-backed cryptocurrencies surged so far this year, the wider cryptocurrency market has been in a downtrend. Bitcoin (BTC) has lost more than 11% of its value so far this year, while the wider crypto market has fallen by a little over 30%, based on the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index.

The tokens, which are backed by physical gold and track its price, experienced a surge in value as investors sought refuge from the uncertainty induced by the escalating U.S.-China trade war.

The move echoes a broader return to gold as a safe-haven asset. Inflows into gold ETFs hit 226.5 tonnes in the first quarter of 2025, the highest level since early 2022, according to data from the World Gold Council. Nearly 60% of that demand came from North America.

Similarly, gold-backed cryptocurrencies saw net token minting of over $42.7 million in the first quarter of the year, according to data from RWA.xyz, helping along with gold’s price appreciation raise their total market capitalization near $1.4 billion.