Ripple rips past $3

Ripple continues to defy odds as it blasts past $3 and now has a market cap of over half that of bitcoin.

At the time of writing this article, the value of each one of 38,739,144,847 premined XRPs is $3.75, giving it a market cap of $145,104,440,071. This places it firmly in the 2nd spot and represents 58% of bitcoin’s $247,478,673,775 market cap.

Ripple recently raised eyebrows just last week, when it took over the No.2 spot from Ethereum and shot past $2 per XRP.

It has returned over 57,000% to its investors in the past 12 months, going from $0.006561 to $3.75.

Due to its premined and centralised nature and association with traditional banks, Ripple has been one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies.

This has made it very unpopular with hard core bitcoin fans, who strongly believe in decentralisation and disrupting the traditional banking system.

Despite the negative sentiment among the crypto community, the company behind Ripple has been striking some big partnerships recently and was even added to Bloomberg’s price terminal in December, which has reflected very favorably in its valuation.

The recent turbulent trading environment in South Korea has also led to panic buying. It most likely contributed significantly to Ripple meteoric rise.