Ripple overtakes Ethereum as the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap
Last Friday's surge in Ripple's XRP saw it overtook Ethereum as the contender to the Bitcoin throne - numbers from CoinMarketCap show.
It adds an interesting change to the cryptocurrency space and what they refer to as the "flippening" - which is regarded as the event that the next cryptocurrency in line dethrones Bitcoin as the most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.
While the gap between Bitcoin to Ripple and Ethereum remains large, Ripple's rise from the fourth place to second place in a span of a week has been something that's capturing the attention of most media outlets over the weekend.
The price of XRP has surged over the last week on the back of news exposure from its CEO that the development in XRP will be able to help solve payment problems with greater efficiency - and that it is being adopted by a Japanese financial services firm to test the technology in its card payments system.
XRP prices hit a high of $2.47 on the Bitstamp exchange on Saturday, but prices are trading now at $1.93 - but even so, that puts Ripple's market cap somewhere around $75 billion, which is still higher than Ethereum's latest read of $73 billion.
Ripple's case for the "flippening" could potentially be one of the things to look out for in 2018 as endorsements by financial institutions seem to be providing an impetus that most if not all other cryptocurrencies currently do not have.
