Ripple’s XRP overtakes bitcoin cash as 3rd largest cryptocurrency

pulse

December 14, 2017 6:47 PM

The cryptocurrency, which aims to speed up international bank transfers, has seen astronomical gains this week.

Many

Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency has seen a tremendous gain of 78.2% over the past 24 hours, propelling it to a market cap of $32.029 billion and making it the third-largest digital currency. It trails just bitcoin and Ethereum, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Founded in 2012 by what was then known as Ripple Labs, XRP aims to use blockchain technology to speed up cross-border money transfers and bank settlements. Currently, most of those transactions are facilitated on Swift, a much older network that can often take days to send money internationally, with high fees.

Here's how the rankings now stand, according to coinmarketcap.com:

"I think a lot of this is simply the market better understanding the realities of digital assets performance (speed, throughput etc)," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told Business Insider on Wednesday. "There is - appropriately - a lot of excitement about the potential - but XRP is very uniquely positioned to actually be able to deliver on the promise."

XRP is up 2,469% so far this year.

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