Ethereum Slides Down The Ladder Making Ripple (XRP) The 2nd Largest Cryptocurrency

By Sumedha Bose

Attention to all crypto enthusiasts, there has been a major change in the cryptocurrency hierarchy in the market. In a surprising unfolding of events, Ethereum has been dethroned from its second position on the ladder, and instead, Ripple (XRP) has taken its place.

This is the “Flippening” that no Ethereum investor was looking forward to. For those not aware of the term, it describes a possible scenario when Bitcoin will be replaced at the top by another competitior. Ripple (XRP) has flipped Ethereum and taken its spot, much to the dismay of millions of ETH investors.

According to current data, XRP is more than $400 million ahead of ethereum and has a total valuation of$23.9 billion. The price rise has been a staggering 64 percent for Ripple in the last day and if we were to look at their performance over the week, it has risen approximately 113 percent.

Ripple had recently made an exciting announcement that many XRP based commercial applications will be launced and made live “in the next month or so.” This could be a possible reason for Ripple’s astounding rise. This also comes after a heavyweight bank in USA, PNC Bank, recently joined RippleNet. Ripple’s official handle tweeted:

.@PNCBank has joined the 100+ financial institutions on RippleNet. It’s one of the first major U.S. banks to use #blockchain tech to streamline payments into and out of the country. https://t.co/nckQaup9vZ

— Ripple (@Ripple) September 19, 2018

Matthew Newton, analyst at eToro made the following analysis regarding this flippening,

“Despite being one the most polarizing cryptos of them all, eToro customers can’t get enough of XRP at the moment; it has more exposure than any other asset on our platform. As we’ve seen in the past, the price tends to move in short, sharp bursts, picking up a lot of momentum when the hype builds. It remains to be seen how much further it could go.”

Ed Cooper, head of mobile at crypto-friendly fintech company Revolut, had the following statement

“The high transaction values, coupled with market sentiment following the announcement on Monday could indeed be the reason why XRP reached new highs, having gained nearly 50% in the last 24 hours. While this is great news for many crypto enthusiasts and especially for XRP fans, it remains to be seen if the bullish trend will prevail, given the current market conditions that have seen nearly all cryptocurrencjy losing around a great deal of their value since the beginning of the year.”

It remains to be seen what other surprises the market holds for us in the coming days.