Investing.com – Ripple traded higher on Tuesday, as reports of growing interest in the cryptocurrency’s technology continued to support sentiment as it prepared to test its recent all-time high.
Ripple XRP rose 5.07% to $2.15 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. Ripple rose to an all-time high of $2.3998 at the weekend, and boasts a market cap of $92.67 billion.
Ripple simplifies the way financial institutions like banks process their customers’ payments around the world.
“Ripple connects banks, payment providers and digital asset exchanges via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally,” A recent McKinsey study noted.
The native currency of Ripple is XRP aka Ripple – and there’s a finite amount of XRP in existence.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, added to gains but sentiment on the popular digital currency has soured as its volatile nature and slow speed of transactions has led many to question whether the cryptocurrency would function as a suitable medium of payment, reducing some of its allure.
Steam, a digital distribution platform, said in a blog post that it would cease support of bitcoin as a payment method “due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin.”
On the Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $14,422, up $1253, or 9.50%, after hitting an all-time high of $19,891 in December. Bitcoin’s market cap was roughly $235.15 billion, about 36% of the total value of all cryptocurrencies, well below its market share of 70% at the start of the 2017.
Bitcoin cash rose 13.79% to $2626.4, after surging above $4000 to a record high of $4,100 in December. 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, added 11.84%% to $251.8. Ethereum, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 17.65% to $867.92, slightly below its recent peak of $890 set earlier.