XRP jumps 15%, while bitcoin and ether trade near record highs as Tesla, BNY Mellon and Mastercard warm to cryptocurrencies

Summary List PlacementThe XRP price jumped on Friday as interest in cryptocurrencies surged after Elon Musk’s Tesla snapped up $1.5 billion of bitcoin and BNY Mellon and Mastercard took steps towards using the digital tokens.
XRP was up 15% $0.5954 as of 6am ET.
The bitcoin price was 2.4% higher at $47,412 on the Bitstamp exchange, off a record high of above $48,300 touched on Thursday.
Ether, the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network, was up 6% to $1,769 on Bitstamp. It also off a record high of more than $1,800 reached earlier in the week.
‘Meme’ cryptocurrency dogecoin was down 9.38% to $0.0676, however.
Elon Musk’s electric-car company Tesla revealed on Monday that it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and planned to start accepting it as payment.
The announcement sent bitcoin soaring to a record high of above $48,000 after languishing below $40,000 for much of the previous two weeks.
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On Thursday, bitcoin hit a new high of above $48,300 after BNY Mellon and Mastercard both appeared to warm to cryptocurrencies.
Mastercard announced it will allow merchants to accept select cryptocurrencies on its network starting later this year. And Bank of New York Mellon said it will issue, hold, and transfer bitcoin for clients in the future.
“Hot off the heels of Tesla’s $1.5bn investment in Bitcoin these developments, these developments are giving more juice for the rally,” said Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at trading platform Markets.com.
Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at currency firm Oanda, said: “All of this will certainly make the crypto space a more dominant feature [in the markets] in the months ahead.”
The XRP price was the biggest winner on Friday, although the Ripple network’s cryptocurrency is wildly volatile.
XRP soared and crashed in early February when a Reddit-organized buy-and-hold scheme appeared to fall apart after the price touched $0.74.
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