XRP sails

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XRP is rallying as a legal case involving its future appears to be moving in the right direction. As of 7:08 a.m. (EST) today, XRP had gained 7% in 24 hours to hit $0.78.

XRP is the sixth-largest digital currency, according to CoinGecko. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission begs to differ.

The SEC, in bringing fraud charges against Ripple, the company with which XRP is closely associated, is arguing that XRP is an investment contract, not unlike a stock, and that it's issuance to the public was done unlawfully.

“The lawsuit has gone exceedingly well," said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse during a main stage sit-down yesterday with CNBC's Ryan Browne at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit.

A seemingly important SEC-internal-documents-related ruling deemed unfavorable to the regulatory agency was handed down by the judge in the case, possibly stoking optimism over the odds of a favorable conclusion for the defendants (Cointelegraph).

Among the Top 20 coins, with the exception of XRP and also Dogecoin (+3%), most assets were slightly off.

Charging into the payments space by way of the blockchain, Terra created a decentralized, and yet stable, digital coin juggernaut, TerraUSD (UST). They did it utilizing algorithms and Terra's in-house reserve currency, LUNA. And then Terra boldly pivoted to backing its signature stablecoin with Bitcoin instead.

The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), responsible for building UST reserves, earlier this week reported a total stash of $2.3 billion, most (75%) of which was in BTC. A new infusion of $800 million worth of LUNA tokens apparently just came into LFG coffers but quickly exited, swapped for UST.

When all of this Terra stablecoin reserve diversification activity began to gain attention, around the first week of April, Terra's LUNA rocketed to an all-time high near $120. However, LUNA has since shed one-third of its value.

Likewise, BTC, flirting with $47,000 on April 5, has been on a downward slope ever since. A quick check of the largest digital coin shows it barely clinging to $40K, which is a phrase used more than a few times this week.

According to Decrypt, the UST reserve stewards at LFG are now also planning a $100 million purchase of Avalanche (AVAX) for an extra layer of diversification.

AVAX has declined 3% in the past 24 hours.

BlackRock, with a staggering $9.5 trillion in assets under management, is considering how USD Coin (USDC) can be used in capital markets (The Daily Hodl).

BlackRock has entered into a strategic partnership with USDC’s backer, Circle, an arranged dalliance which includes $400 million in funding and a pledge for joint exploration of possible traditional-financial-world applications for USDC.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told Bloomberg the partnership will be “transformative.”

Blockchain-based use cases in traditional capital markets, at least for the moment, seem to be centered on fostering digital versions of the dollar.

"BlackRock can be a huge partner for us," Allaire said of efforts to establish a pre-eminent model “that the U.S. can really get behind.”