Ripple soars more  than 30 percent

BITCOINNEW YORK — Ripple surged more than 30 percent last Friday to an all-time high, briefly surpassing ethereum as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.

Officially called XRP, ripple climbed nearly 33 percent to a record high of $1,90 and traded near $1,81 last Friday morning, according to CoinMarketCap. The digital currency briefly had a market cap of more than $71,8 billion, a few hundred million greater than ethereum at the time. The two cryptocurrencies vied for the second-place spot as prices fluctuated in morning trading.

Bitcoin remains the largest digital currency by far. It has a market capitalisation of roughly $241 billion, accounting for about 41,5 percent of the total cryptocurrency market cap tracked by CoinMarketCap. Ripple accounted for about 12,4 percent, while ethereum was around 12,3 percent, the website showed.

Ripple had climbed above ethereum into the second-place spot in May. But back then ripple was only worth about 36 cents. The digital currency ended 2016 at less than 1 cent and topped $1 only last week. Gains have accelerated since, and ripple is up more than 29 000 percent this year.

Ethereum rose about 0,6 percent to $741,67 last Friday morning, with a market cap of about $71,6 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin traded little changed near $14,306, according to Coinbase.

Ripple is officially the name of a San Francisco-based start-up using blockchain technology to develop a payments network for banks, digital asset exchanges and other financial institutions.

Network participants use a digital coin called XRP for transactions. The cryptocurrency has a four-second settlement time, versus more than two minutes for ethereum and over an hour for bitcoin, according to Ripple’s website.

The company said more than 100 financial institutions use its network. In the last few weeks, some South Korean and Japanese banks have been testing Ripple’s systems for cross-border payments, according to the company. The news of the consortium follows a bullish month for the coin, which has been propelled to new heights by interest from Asia, according to reporting by Forbes.

“Asians are going mad for Ripple,” Alexey Ivanov, the CEO and co-founder of Polynom Crypto Capital, a Moscow-based cryptocurrency and blockchain investment fund manager, told Forbes.

Gold or cryptos?

That’s actually the wrong question, as Mike Maloney points out in his new episode of Hidden Secrets of Money. This movie-quality production follows his three-year journey into investigating the cryptocurrency landscape. He expected to find nothing but a digital payment system. Instead…

“What I found is a technology that can revolutionise the planet.”

Gold and cryptos have some strong similarities. But they also have some key differences, which is the reason Mike holds both. The crypto craze has raised some honest questions and concerns, especially as it relates to gold and silver.

Why have cryptos become so popular?

Cryptocurrencies offer users another way to opt out of the current monetary and banking system, and that can be enticing. The technology is also exciting, especially for those that are more tech-savvy.

The more recent reason for their popularity, of course, has been the surge in prices. Some people have become millionaires from their early investments, and that has spurred others to get involved, driving up the price and the number of cryptos in existence.— CNBC/Gold-Silver.

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