Ethereum Retakes Spot As the Second Largest Cryptocurrency

Ethereum had long been the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world, but it had recently had its position overtaken by Ripple for a brief moment. Now Ethereum has regained its spot as the second only to the bitcoin in terms of the world’s largest cryptocurrency based on market cap.

The price of Ripple fell by nearly a quarter this past Monday, thus resulting in the Ripple market cap declining to around $95 billion. Ethereum currently holds a cap of about $114 billion, thus making it once again the second-largest currency.

Big Changes

The changes come amid the bombshell report that the Chinese government is planning to get out of the cryptocurrency mining industry. This led to a slight selloff of various currencies around the world.

An even larger story leading to the Ripple selloff came from a decision by Coinbase not to deal with the currency. There were rumors that Coinbase would start offering Ripple as a currency people could trade through the prominent currency exchange site. But the site made the announcement that it would not be working with Ripple anytime soon. Coinbase stated that it would not be adding any new currencies to its options for what people could trade.

Also, there were concerns in the investing market over Ripple being a massive bubble that could break apart. The currency had jumped in value by at least nine times in the past month, thus leading to its current total. The selloff could have been out of a concern that the value of the currency could change dramatically.

Selloff From CoinMarketCap?

CoinMarketCap, a prominent website that lists information on cryptocurrency values, might have contributed to the change in rankings. The website announced it would remove data from South Korean exchanges from its site. Reports from that country are typically higher in value than what is found elsewhere around the world. This led to the prices declining on the site by a slight bit. This could have been a factor in why Ripple was traded off so much, although many other currencies have experienced similar declines.

Drops Everywhere

Although Ripple experienced a sizeable drop in value recently, Ethereum has seen a slight drop too. The value of the currency declined by about 5 percent in recent time. This was primarily due to China getting out of the currency mining field.

In fact, most other major high-value currencies experienced similar drops. Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin both saw declines of about 10 percent of their value during the same time period. Bitcoin went down by about 5 percent as well.

But it is the 25% drop in Ripple’s value that is the largest. The Coinbase news was clearly a major factor, but the fact that China might not consider mining Ripple is a good contributor to the change in value.

The recent changes to Ripple have caused Ethereum to become the second-largest cryptocurrency again. But with more people learning about Ripple in recent time thanks to its rise in value, there is a strong potential for the two currencies to compete to be second to the bitcoin on the market.

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