Cryptocurrencies

Ripple Duels with Ethereum for Second Place Market Cap

Depending on what time you checked crypto prices over the past couple of days, you may have seen a new silver medal winner in terms of market capitalization. That’s because Ripple and Ethereum have been trading off the spot with market caps just north of $22 billon. Of course, in either scenario, Bitcoin has remained on top with a cap of around $112 billion.

As Forbes reports, the frequent change in guard comes as Ethereum is being heavily sold, keeping prices in the $220 range. That’s more than one thousand dollars below the all-time high it saw in January this year. Meanwhile Ripple (XRP), which is also well behind its high, has seen its price rise by as much as 100% this month to challenge Ether’s second place crown.

One of the reasons that Ripple has enjoyed a nice upswing as of late is an announcement by Coinbase that it’s hoping to list more cryptocurrencies on its popular exchange. In a blog post, the company wrote, “Today we’re announcing a new process that will allow us to rapidly list most digital assets that are compliant with local law, by satisfying listing requests in a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction manner. In practice, this means some new assets listed on our platform may only be available to customers in select jurisdictions for a period of time.” Although this news doesn’t actually say that Ripple will be among the assets added to the platform, the speculation of such a move has seemingly been a factor.

Forbes notes that investors are suddenly feeling optimistic about Ripple thanks to a bullish prediction from one analyst. deVere Group founder and CEO Nigel Green has suggested that XRP could hit a per-coin price of $1 by the end of the year (it currently sits at around $.55). Green also gave a fairly strong endorsement of the token, saying, “Cryptocurrencies are the future of money and, clearly, XRP is proving to be one of the most useful cryptocurrencies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. The use of XRP is set to increase, and naturally, this will positively impact its price. I think it is likely that we’ll see it hit the $1.00 price level before year-end. It could even be double this in 12 months’ time as XRP adoption and usage soars.”

While there’s little chance of any other cryptocurrency challenging Bitcoin’s supremacy anytime soon, the battle for second place that’s currently in progress is quite a notable story. Furthermore, it’s up for debate whether this swap says more about the strength of Ripple or the fall of Ethererum (personally I’m inclined to say the latter). In any case it’s certainly been an interesting week in the world of cryptocurrencies — for better or worse.

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