Ripple surged again on Friday going up over 55 percent hitting a new all time high. This surge also saw Ripple’s market cap increasing and taking over Ethereum’s place, which now makes Ripple officially the second largest cryptocurrency in the world now next to Bitcoin.
Ripple (or XRP) initially surged in value after Bitcoin fell a few days ago due to stricter regulations placed by the South Korean government (the South Korean market has lots of Bitcoin traders, so regulations impacted Bitcoin’s demand negatively). As BTC fell, Ripple began to gain. This didn’t stop as now Ripple has reached heights it hadn’t reached before. It reached an all time high of $2.23 on Friday afternoon.
Ripple’s market cap also rose to $86.3 billion thus surpassing Ethereum which has a market cap of $73 billion (all info taken from each currency’s respective websites). Both Ethereum and Ripple were fluctuating in the morning which made it a race to the second largest cryptocurrency spot, but Ripple is the clear winner now with a gap like this.
This is not the only time Ripple overtook Ethereum to become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world. Back in May of this year, Ripple overtook Ethereum even though it was only worth 36 cents at the time. Ripple made huge leaps in very short periods of time in 2017. It ended 2016 with a value less than 1 cent and was only up to $1 a week ago. In less than a week it jumped to above $2, a lot of credit for this goes to Bitcoin falling too. With 2017 now at its end, Ripple has grown almost 35,000 percent this year!
Although Bitcoin rebounded on Friday afternoon as it came back up above $14,000, Ripple was still going strong. Ethereum also rose by a bit to go above $750.
With it’s value still very cheap and it already becoming the second largest cryptocurrency in the world, Ripple seems set for a bright future ahead. Its price is not way over the top like Bitcoin currently which opens the door for more investors to come in which will only further help Ripple grow and reach its true potential.
Who knows Ripple might even become the world’s largest cryptocurrency by beating Bitcoin sometime in the future.
More on Ripple
Ripple is the official name of a San Francisco based startup that uses blockchain technology. It uses the technology to generate payments for banks, digital asset exchanges and other financial entities. The network participants use a digital coin called XRP (basically what Ripple’s official cryptocurrency’s name is). What sets Ripple apart from its competition is how it takes very less time compared to the rest.
Ripple only takes four seconds for settlement time whereas Ethereum takes 2 minutes and Bitcoin takes a massive one hour. It can be argued that Bitcoin and Ethereum are larger currencies with more users registered on their servers however, Ripple is now the second largest cryptocurrency in the world thus it doesn’t have a low number of investors either.
Therefore, Ripple has a definite advantage over others which makes it a more welcome prospect for investors due to it’s cheap price and low settlement time.
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The company claims that over 100 financial institutions use its network. Some South Korean and Japanese banks have also been using Ripple in tests for cross border payments. Thus, people do see the use for Ripple which would only help it grow further by increasing its demand.
Ripple officially owns around 61 percent of the total XRP (100 billion) in existence. This gives Ripple a massive $136 billion worth in digital currency. The future therefore, seems bright for Ripple as it’s made such amazing progress (much more than almost any other cryptocurrency in percentage terms) this year with potential for much more.