Here are the top three news stories over the past day presented to you by U. Today.
Following XRP’s recent notable surge, which at its peak hit 22% and pushed the price to the $0.7 mark, the community started speculating about the potential approval of an XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF). Uphold’s head of research Martin Hiesboeck took to X platform to share his view on this outstanding price run, suggesting that it is the fruit of increased development efforts on XRP following the lawsuit settlement. He then hinted at an imminent launch of XRP exchange-traded products (ETP), writing that it is “around the corner,” adding “There is life in the old girl.” Another factor fueling speculation is Uphold’s substantial $1.53 billion holdings in XRP. According to data, XRP represents 27.62% of total transactions on the Uphold platform, or more than 19.9 million transactions, which highlights XRP’s continued significance and appeal to cryptocurrency investors.
In a recent move, head of SpaceX and world-famous centibillionaire Elon Musk reposted an extract from Joe Rogan’s podcast, in which the latter talked to the renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil. According to Kurzweil, AI will match any person in intelligence within the next five years, by 2029, adding that he first made this prediction back in 1999. Musk, however, disagreed with the futurist’s prognosis, stating that by the year 2029, AI will probably be smarter than “all humans combined.” As for AI reaching the level of human intelligence, the centibillionaire expects this outcome to happen as early as 2025. Musk’s opinion on the matter elicited a mixed reaction within the community, from ironic disbelief to strong concern. Lex Fridman, who has featured Musk on his podcasts on multiple occasions, wrote that he anticipates an interesting future and hopes humanity will ultimately prevail against AI.
Data provided by Kaiko demonstrates that meme tokens have experienced outstanding gains, driving the weekly trade volume to a multiyear high of about $80 billion. Of all these meme tokens, Shiba Inu (SHIB) has performed the best; over the past week, it has been the clear leader in trade volume. With an astounding $31 billion in trade volume, SHIB has eclipsed not just its fellow meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE), which achieved $23 billion in trade volume, but also other well-known nonmeme altcoins like Solana (SOL). SHIB’s rise to the top of the meme coin hierarchy is underscored by its exceptional price growth. Since the beginning of March, the price of SHIB has surged by 154%, peaking at $0.00004567 per token. As recently reported by U. Today, this spike propelled SHIB into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, which is a major achievement for the meme token.