Watching the movements of cryptocurrency markets can make you feel a little seasick. And now the alt-coins Ripple and Ethereum have both entered choppy waters, you might be feeling a bit nauseous if you’ve got any money invested in them.
Last week, Ripple (which is referred to as XRP) was the talk of the town amid rumours investors would soon be able to buy and sell it on the easy-to-use platform CoinBase. This sparked so much excitement that Ripple soared to record heights and briefly made its founder as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. But now Ripple is on the slide, plunging from a high of about $3.80 (£2.80) to $1.90 (£1.40) in less than a week. Ethereum (ETH or Ether), on the other hand, has been on the up all year. It’s interesting because the ‘blockchain’ which records transactions can also store other information such as contracts and even computer programmes.
We spoke to two crypto experts to find out what was happening. Benjamin Dives, CEO of the London Blockchain Exchange (BLX), blamed the price fall of Ripple blamed on a decision by the website CoinMarketCap, which removed prices from South Korean exchanges from its calculations of digital currency rates without any warning. He told us: ‘The recent fall in price of Ripple’s XRP token could be attributed to numerous factors – including the recent exclusion of Korean market prices on CoinMarketCap, investors taking profit, or simply just a healthy market correction from the token’s rapid rise. ‘Ether, on the other hand, has instead enjoyed a rise from the recent market developments. ‘As investors move some of their vast Bitcoin profits to other cryptocurrencies, many cast their gaze over to the most popular decentralised computing platform in the world – Ethereum. The market is again waking up to the platform’s huge potential.’