Ripple Becomes First Cryptocurrency After Bitcoin to Surpass $100 Billion

Ripple has achieved a historic milestone on January 3, becoming the first cryptocurrency after bitcoin to be valued at $100 billion. At press time, the total valuation of Ripple is $121 billion.

Up by $19 Billion in 24 Hours

Over the past 24 hours, the price of XRP, Ripple’s native token, has increased by more than 24 percent, to over $3. The market valuation of Ripple increased from below $95 billion to $116 billion, further distancing itself from the third most valuable cryptocurrency in the global market, Ethereum.

As usual, the daily trading volume of XRP is heavily concentrated in the South Korean market. Korbit and Bithumb are processing 40 percent of global Ripple trades, accounting for more than $2.2 billion of Ripple’s daily trading volume.

On Bithumb, the second largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the world based in Seoul, South Korea, Ripple remains as the most traded cryptocurrency, recording a daily trading volume that is three times larger than that of bitcoin.

Despite being the largest and most liquid Ripple exchange market, XRP is being traded with a high premium within South Korean cryptocurrency market. On Bithumb and Korbit, Ripple is being traded at $3.5, with a with a 12 percent premium.

Ripple has also started to gain some mainstream media coverage, with news publications demonstrating their readers how to purchase, store, and send Ripple with ease. Such increase in coverage of Ripple by the media and fear of missing out (FOMO)-driven South Market’s push has allowed Ripple to achieve new all-time highs and sustain strong momentum.

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO at Ripple, which is responsible for the development of the Ripple blockchain network, stated that the “real use case” sets Ripple apart from other digital assets.

“Caught up with Joel Comm and Travis Wright on Bad Crypto about Ripple and how its real use case sets it apart from other digital assets, why Ripple is the most efficient solution for cross border payments,” said Garlinghouse.

But as with any other cryptocurrency, Ripple was met with some criticism. Earlier today, on January 3, P4man stated that the vision of Ripple to evolve into Swift 2.0 is not realistic, because in order for the Ripple network to become a Swift-like network, banks will need to gain control over it.

“As for the moonshot of replacing Swift; first of all, I highly doubt a global consensus protocol is the right approach and could even scale to that level. But also, banks currently control Swift. How likely is it they would relinquish control to a small startup and allow themselves to become beholden to its private currency, that they have no need for?,” P4man wrote in a blog post published on Coindesk.

Swift 2.0

It is not possible to place a market valuation on the Swift network, given that banks have ownership of it and it is the backbone of the entire global banking system. But, like the New York Stock Exchange, if it was valued as a company or a project, its market valuation would be in the trillions.

Essentially, the current market valuation of Ripple comes from the total addressable market, given the premise that Ripple will someday be able to overtake Swift and evolve into a multi-trillion dollar market.