Investing.com – Ripple moved above $2 for the second time in its five-year history amid reports of growing interest in the cryptocurrency’s technology.
Ripple XRP hit an all-time high of $2.39 on the Poloniex exchange yesterday following recent reports that Tokyo-based financial services company SBI Holdings and its subsidiary SBI Ripple Asia plan to use Ripple’s digital payments technology. The all-time high was followed by a selloff, and the cryptocurrency dropped as low as $1.61 in late night trading. The now second largest cryptocurrency by market cap trades at $2, at 8:00AM ET (13:00 GMT).
Bitcoin, meanwhile, added to gains but sentiment on the popular digital currency has soured in recent days, as investors questioned whether bitcoin’s failure to sustain a move higher above a psychological $16,000 level pointed to weak demand.
On the Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $13,000, up $544, or 4.76%, after recently hitting an all-time high of $19,891.
Also weighing on bitcoin were signs of growing regulatory pressure in the industry after the South Korean government proposed legislation to prohibit companies from providing settlement services for cryptocurrency transactions. This comes just days after Israel Securities Authority chairman Shmuel Hauser he will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Despite the year-end blip in bitcoin, the popular digital currency boasts a return of more than 1200% since the start of the year, dwarfing the returns of the traditional benchmarks like the S&P 500.
Bitcoin cash rose 3.7% to $2,285, after surging above $4000 to a record high of $4,100 last week. Bitcoin Cash was created in August following a split in Bitcoin’s blockchain – the digital ledger which records every bitcoin transaction – in an event know as a ‘hard fork’.
Litecoin, meanwhile, rose 1.55% to $219.12. Ethereum, now third largest cryptocurrency by market cap after Ripple's recent surge, rose 6.32% to $710.4, well below its recent peak of $863 set last week.
The top 19 cryptocurrencies by market cap are all trading in the green on New Year's Eve.