After weeks of trading in parallel, the gap for cryptocurrency’s fourth-largest spot by market capitalization is closing. BNB currently edges out XRP by half a billion dollars. In crypto’s volatile world, that gap could evaporate in hours.
On Myriad, a prediction market built by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan on BNB Chain, traders are essentially calling this one a coin flip at 55% favoring BNB to maintain its ranking through November 2nd, with the odds flipping several times in the last 48 hours.
Bitcoin currently trades at around $107,000, falling a long way since hitting a new all-time high above $125,000 in early October, while traditional markets push to new highs. It’s creating a complex risk environment where altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin) are getting squeezed. Right now more than 90% of all the altcoins in the top 100 coins by market cap are in the red zone.
But which one will be more valuable in the near term? This is what the charts say: Below is a chart showing the market capitalizations of BNB and XRP through time.
Overall, both coins are bearish at the moment. The comparative market cap chart shows XRP (blue) testing a descending trendline from above, and while it’s still above key horizontal support, the trajectory is clearly negative. Volume has been decreasing during the decline — often a precursor for either a bounce or capitulation.
On the other hand, BNB (yellow) is also correcting, but the trend is weaker. This is important in shorter timeframes because both FUD and FOMO episodes have more influence than longer timeframes, which offer time for corrections that take prices back into a normal course.
XRP price: Strong bearish momentum in motion
XRP opened today at $2.55 and trades at $2.45, down 4% with a low of $2.42. That’s a sharper decline than BNB’s 3.4% drop — and this relative weakness matters when you’re trying to defend a narrow market cap lead.
The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, for XRP sits at 42.96. RSI measures whether an asset is overbought (above 70) or oversold (below 30). At close to 43, this neutral-to-weak reading suggests traders are a bit nervous about XRP, but not enough to dump their coins without thinking about it twice.
At 36.83, XRP’s Average Directional Index, or ADX, is more difficult to interpret. ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction — and readings above 25 confirm a strong trend is in place. Traders typically interpret ADX above 35 as strong action, but in this case, after a major spike, the readings are on the way down and coming back to normal. Still, it would be hard for traders to ignore the fact that the current direction is negative and the ADX is very high, which is not ideal for bulls.
