XRP Price Slips. These Catalysts Are Key to Reigniting the Crypto Rally. — Barrons.com

By George GloverXRP was falling Friday — and that doesn't bode well for the crypto, which has failed to fly this week even after Ripple Labs appeared to finally win its long-running legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The token, which is used to facilitate and settle transactions on Ripple's digital-payments platform, was down 2.4% to $2.39 in early trading, according to data from the crypto exchange Kraken.Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Wednesday that the SEC had dropped its case against the fintech company after more than four years, which sparked a brief rally for XRP. A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment.The token has given up most of its gains since then, and now trades just 3% above the level it was at before Garlinghouse's announcement. It's likely that investors had been pricing in the assumption that the SEC would scale back its war on digital assets since President Donald Trump nominated the crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to head up the agency in December.Trump named XRP as one of the cryptocurrencies that could be added to the U.S. government's crypto stockpile earlier this month, and Garlinghouse said Wednesday that he expects an exchange-traded fund tracking the token's price to be approved this year. Those are the sorts of catalysts that will be needed to reignite the XRP rally now that Ripple's legal brawl with the SEC has seemingly been resolved.Other cryptocurrencies were also struggling Friday. Bitcoin slid 0.4% to $83,789, and Ethereum was down 0.2% to $1,975.Write to George Glover at [email protected] content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.