Just as bitcoin, the ripple has had some volatility in the past one month. Until December 20, the ripple stayed below $1 per coin. The market cap was hovering around $30 billion then. On December 21, however, the price hit for the first time beyond $1 when it touched $1.24 before closing at $1.19.
It had taken only 8 days to hit the threshold of $2 when the ripple crossed past $2.27 on December 29. The beginning of 2018 seemed good for the alternative currency when its price hit $3.28 on January 3, taking the market cap to $95 billion. The very next day, the ripple hit $120 Billion, surging past the market cap of ethereum. Until January 8, the price stayed near $3 but fell in the closing hours when Coinmarket cap removed some South Korean exchanges for "extreme price divergences".Ripple is a Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, currency exchange and remittance network. It is based around a shared public database or ledger, which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exchanges and remittance in a distributed process.