Ripple closed the year as one of the best performing digital currency in 2017, surpassing
Ethereum, as its share value witnessed a 360 times rise in price. Ripple’s market cap shot up from $40 billion to around $88 billion. On January 1, 2017, its marketprice was just close to half a cent. A year later, a single token now sells for $2.29. At the time of writing the price was at $3.63.
Last week, Ripple rose to become the second largest digital currency in the world, topped by only Bitcoin. Ripple is the first “altcoin” to hit the $100 billion market valuation. Several crypto investors were shocked by the sudden surge in Ripple’s market value. According to Forbes, the sharp rise in Ripple’s value was due to the strategic partnership between South Korean banks and SBI Ripple Asia. The banks it is partnering with would start to process payments on Ripple’s platform at the end of the Q1, 2018.
The earlier claims that banks are not carrying out transactions using Ripple network is not true. Swedish bank SEB used Ripple’s Blockchain technology to settle $180 million worth of payments on behalf of its high net worth clients. Japanese and Thai banks have been using Ripple to process near-instantaneous transactions for months now. However, there are no major banks that uses Ripple’s network to process large volume transactions on a daily basis.
In the last one week, South Korean cryptocurrency markets such as Bithumb, Korbit and
Coinone have been responsible for more than 50% of Ripple’s $4.5 billion daily trading volume. According to the CEO of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Korbit, Tony Lyu, the digital market in South Korea is driven by the fact that no one wants to miss out.