Ripple has taken Bitcoin cash’s spot as the world’s third largest cryptocurrency following a steady increase in price in the past few days. With a market cap of $30.6 billion and having grown quite a bit for the past few days, Ripple has sparked the interest of many investors.
Over the past few days, Ripple’s daily trading volume exceeded the daily trading volume of all other cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin. Today (December 15th), Ripple’s daily trading volume was double the volume of Ethereum.
Ripple has been growing steadily for the past few days now. On December 12, it was sitting at a value below $0.3. At the time this writing, its current value is $0.798. Its value did fall in between as it reached its peak at $0.89 in between but later fell. Its market cap hit $31 billion at one point, now it currently stands at $30.6 billion.
Bitcoin cash, whom ripple overtook fell by almost 10% in the last 24 hours which caused it to go behind the growing Ripple. Bitcoin cash hasn’t been doing as well ever since the split from Bitcoin but it’s overall performance has still been impressive for an ‘alt currency’, as its value has gone up by over 500% in total. But now, Bitcoin cash has other competition as well in the form of Ripple which after peaking at $0.89 did fall but is gradually increasing again.
Speaking of Ripple, it was reported that the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange market was responsible for pushing up the price of Ripple by over 70% in a single day. This was done through a collaboration between Japanese and South Korean banks to test the Ripple blockchain technology-based payment solutions.
Ripple will probably expand in these countries as the CEO of SBI Ripple Asia, Takashi Okita, made an official statement about Ripple labs testing and expanding the blockchain Ripple architecture in Japan and South Korea. Takashi believes that Ripple will have an increase in demand in South Korea in the future due to the country being one of the most active in the world in blockchain innovation and trading of digital assets.
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It was after this statement made by Takashi that Ripple began rapidly increasing in value in the past few days. The increase in price was enough to trigger the South Korean market into action which led to an even higher demand for Ripple which then further increased its price. This is because the South Korean market and the investors in it have this fear of missing out on something. When the price of a cryptocurrency rises (in this case Ripple), the investors in this market also rush to invest in it seeing its rising price as a sign of future potential.
Cryptocurrencies with a strong base in the South Korean exchange market tend to decline or surge very quickly and by large amounts. Some days the cryptocurrencies will see a rapid increase and on some a rapid decline.
Ripple is already highly traded in South Korean exchanges. Bithumb, South Korea’s largest exchange accounts for about 31% of Ripple’s total trades globally. Bithumb also has a higher volume of Ripple traded than most of the world’s top exchanges combined.
However, Ripple’s momentum in South Korea could come to a halt as the government is planning to impose strict regulations on the local cryptocurrency exchanges so centralization of Ripple’s trade volumes could hurt its current momentum.
The stricter regulations imposed by the South Korean government will surely impact the prices of many cryptocurrencies especially Ripple since a large chunk of it is traded in South Korea. Since investors will be limited by government regulations and some will even have their right to invest also taken away, this will effectively reduce demand for many cryptocurrencies thus driving down their price.
It remains to be seen what the actual consequences are of the rules imposed by the South Korean market, but it is likely that it could have a negative impact on Ripple which could see it going behind Bitcoin cash again.