Cryptocurrencies across the board saw massive fluctuations in their prices recently with the bull taking over the market. This price surge was also joined by market cap bumps which at one point elevated Bitcoin’s cap to record levels.
Although a majority of the story was about Bitcoin’s surge, it is imperative to not forget the performance put forth by the altcoin market. Cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and XRP rocketed up the charts to reach zeniths unseen for more than two years. It was now time to see what lay in store for these coins over the next couple of weeks.
At the moment, Ethereum was sitting pretty at the number two position while holding a value of $505.5. The largest altcoin had broken the $600 threshold during the bull run which occurred alongside the launch of Ethereum 2.0. Currently, Ethereum’s market cap clocked in at $57.43 billion while the daily trading volume had increased to $24.1 billion. The price had fallen to $505, with critics pointing to another ‘bubble bust’.
Ethereum supporters chimed in by claiming that the network had witnessed steady growth over the past couple of years, citing it as one of the reasons for the launch of ETH 2.0. Some popular crypto twitteratis added that the Ethereum team must be appreciated because launching v2.0 was like “launching a rocket mid-air”. As an added trivia, Status tweeted:
Interesting ETH 2.0 trivia: the creator of the deposit contract is actually unknown, as they used @TornadoCash to mix 1 ETH used for the contract creation itself. The remaining funds were then donated to @wikileaks. https://t.co/uBkaCE87mJ
— Status (@ethstatus) November 20, 2020
The Ethereum team was confident that they understood the needs of the market and that price hikes were not the be-all and end-all of the industry. Another altcoin that rode the bull wave was XRP, as Ripple’s native cryptocurrency shredded through long-held price resistances. In the space of 2 days between November 20 and November 22, the value of XRP shot up from $0.299 to $071. This spike further allowed XRP to reclaim the third position from Tether.
As it climbed to its yearly high, the value of XRP fell again to near to the 50 cent mark. At press time, XRP was trading for $0.53 with a total market cap of $24.26 billion. The XRP ecosystem was also privy to large scale day trading with the 24-hour trade amounting to $21.569 billion. Despite talks of XRP being considered as a security, the third-largest cryptocurrency has managed to stave off opposing forces.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse pointed out that a majority of XRP customers were international customers and not just US-centric. With more than 90 percent of users from around the globe, XRP will do well to focus on functionalities rather than just price.