Ripple moved Ethereum to third place in the ranking of cryptocurrencies with the largest capitalization and moved to second. The coin has surged more than 100% this month as investors believe banks and service providers will soon default to it when making cross-border payments.
Ripple currently has a market cap of $22.2 billion and ethereum has a market cap of $22.1 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday New York time. Bitcoin still ranks first by a wide margin, with a total market capitalization of $113 billion.
Ethereum, which is traded through the digital token ether, has seen a big sell-off this year. Many believe this is due to the huge number of altcoins that were built on the ethereum blockchain last year. Ethereum's price is down 84% this year, falling from around $1,400 to $215. Ripple's price has declined by about the same amount, peaking at $3.71 earlier in the year and falling to $0.26 earlier this month. At the beginning of 2017, Ripple's price was just $0.006.
Today's surge, which has pushed the price of XRP up 25% in the last 24 hours, was sparked by US exchange Coinbase's announcement that it was looking to list new coins. Many believed that among these coins there would be a token from Ripple. Nigel Green, founder and CEO of investment group deVere Group, believes the coin's price will rise to $1 by the end of 2018.
Last week's doubling in price could also be due to the company's launch of a new product that could help banks speed up transactions using the XRP token.
According to https://www.forbes.com/
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