Ripple (XRP), long the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, capped off an impressive single-day rally with a foray onto the market’s silver podium, briefly evicting ethereum (ETH) from the market cap ranking it has long called home.
Ripple (XRP) Challenges Ethereum for Silver Podium
The rally, as CCN reported, saw the ripple price rise an astounding 14 percent on a day when bitcoin (BTC) traded sideways, and no other large-cap cryptocurrency rose more than 4 percent. In fact, XRP’s single-day return was triple that of Metaverse ETP, whose 4 percent gain was second-best among top 50-cryptocurrencies. Following the upswing, the circulating value of XRP briefly surpassed the circulating value of ethereum. According to CoinMarketCap, ripple assumed the silver crown shortly after 9:42 UTC and briefly claimed as much as 10.35 percent of the total cryptocurrency market cap.
Can XRP Sustain Momentum?
While crypto startup Ripple, still the majority owner of the token, has made progress in promoting the adoption of its blockchain products — including xRapid, which unlike the firm’s more established services utilizes the XRP cryptocurrency — it’s not clear what predicated today’s rapid ripple upswell.
In any case, it’s not the first time this year that ripple has managed to punch past ethereum to become the largest speck in bitcoin’s rearview mirror. On several occasions, XRP has seen an unexpected price surge that is uncorrelated to the rest of the market, enabling the token to attain the silver podium, albeit brieefly. In September, for instance, ripple rose a dramatic 64 percent within a single daily trading session, ultimately peaking above $30 billion after sitting as low as $11 billion just two weeks prior.
However, on each of these previous occasions, the XRP rally quickly ran out of gas, and the asset proved unable to cement its position as the silver to bitcoin’s gold. The two cryptocurrency assets remain neck-and-neck as of the time of writing, but it appears that history will once again win out. At present, ethereum has a $21.9 billion market cap, giving it a more than $700 million edge on ripple’s $21.2 billion valuation.
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