Ripple – the second cryptocurrency by market capitalization – rose on Thursday to a record value. At the Poloinex exchange, Ripple’s XRP token increased in price to $3.26. At the time of writing, the price is fluctuating at $3.00.
At the moment, the capitalization of Ripple reached $137.7 billion, which puts it on the second place only after Bitcoin, the latter having $249 billion.
Ripple sells blockchain technology to banks, payment system providers, and other financial institutions to accelerate cross-border payments.
Ripple prices rose after reports that Ripple's blockchain service was chosen for trials and use cases by several reputable financial institutions, including American Express and Santander.
In addition, XRP’s quotation was supported by the desire of investors to invest in digital coins other than Bitcoin. On Tuesday, Bitcoin’s dominance in the crypto market fell to the lowest level in the history.
In 2017, the value of Ripple’s token has grown by more than 32,000%, which is an impressive return. At the beginning of 2017, XRP was priced at $0.006, and it closed the year at $1.98.
In 2017, the growth in the price of Ripple exceeded the growth in the cost of Ether and Bitcoin, which gained “only” 9000% and 1400%, respectively.
Currently, Bitcoin is fluctuating at about $14,381.00 on the Bitfinex exchange. Earlier, BTC fell to a daily low at $14,064.
Since the beginning of 2017, Bitcoin has risen almost twenty-fold: its rate rose from less than $1,000 in early 2017 to a historic high of $19,891, recorded on the Bitfinex exchange on December 17 (on other exchanges, the cost of bitcoin exceeded $20,000 on that day).
However, compared with the historical maximum, which was fixed in mid-December, the Bitcoin rate fell in the last month by almost 50%, after which it recovered a part of the loss to the current level of about $14,000.