Things aren’t looking very rosy for Ethereum (ETH) right now as it just briefly lost its market position to Ripple (XRP). In the last few hours, XRP attained a market cap huge enough to blow past ETH and grab position 2 – right behind Bitcoin.
XRP’s Journey To The Top
XRP has seen exponential price hike over the past 24 hours, even peaking at upwards of 100% gain in the last few hours. After a week-long bullish climb, XRP’s market cap surpassed that of ETH, meaning that the crypto’s market volume has shot up by more than ten-fold over the last 7 days. That’s a very peculiar development given that the crypto market, in general, hasn’t been doing so well over the same period.
Most of the other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin have been swinging between bulls and bears as they struggled to establish decent bottom values. XRP’s market volume is now approaching $23 billion as at the time of writing, a far cry from the $200 million of last week.
The current exponential price explosion of XRP hasn’t gone unnoticed in comparison to the market dominance of others like Bitcoin. In fact, XRP’s growth has put the crypto in a very potent position to challenge Bitcoin in market domination, and the effects have been clear. For example, Bitcoin’s market dominance has dropped by 2% within the last 2 days, meaning that XRP is working to grab a sizeable market share away from Bitcoin.
What’s Next?
This is the kind of development that’s keeping many crypto enthusiasts and analysts awake. Everyone wonders whether XRP could truly challenge Bitcoin and possibly knock it out of the top position.
Now, that’s becoming a serious possibility as XRP just took the 2nd spot a few hours ago after knocking out Ethereum. ETH has been struggling to stay above the $200 range for the past 7 days. However, there are fears of pump and dump activity that might lead to XRP losing ground again to ETH. Time will tell.
Besides the expanding market cap, the fact that XRP is now in the challenging mode with Ethereum could very well spur further market activity and possibly work to more of its advantage. However, the same can’t be said for Ethereum as it now appears as a market loser, and most especially because of its troubles in establishing a credible growth pattern.
Chief among the problems facing Ethereum is the rampant sale of ETH tokens by various ICOs as they seek capital to fund their ventures. That’s why the cryptocurrency has been in a bearish sentiment for the better part of the month.