Ethereum and XRP Leap as Bitcoin Holds Recent Gains
Since yesterday morning, Ethereum has jumped over 9% as commencement of the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 began. This has pushed Ether’s valuation 35.1% higher in just the last week.
Ethereum’s significant gains brought Ether’s valuation to a high of $620.24 before tapering off slightly, and holding above $600 during early morning trading. What is unique about these valuations is the significant break of Ethereum’s movements from Bitcoin (BTCUSD).
While Ethereum rose, Bitcoin became volatile. Despite the ups and downs, Bitcoin finished the day down only 0.2%, holding above $18,300. At the same time, Ripple XRP (XRPUSD) has jumped 59% since yesterday morning, reaching a high not seen since September 2018.
Ethereum 2.0
After launching the initial stage of Ethereum 2.0 earlier in the month, the initiative has accrued over 540,000 ETH (ETHUSD) ensuring that their new ‘Beacon Chain’ has enough funds to move forward. This chain is operated by an initial group of validators who will help with integrating Ethereum’s current blockchain, and its assets, to the new system.
This upgrade, which focuses on scalability, security, and sustainability will reduce power consumption while making it more practical for use by developers, as well as consumers.
Ethereum Challenges Ripple
Currently rapid payments and transfers of assets are quickly executed on Ripple Lab’s network which runs on Ripple XRP. Ethereum’s 2.0 platform may be able to take some of their market share if they can reduce verification times.
Ripple XRP has an advantage for day-to-day transactions with an average processing time of around 4 seconds. This is in comparison to Ether’s 13 seconds. By reducing processing times and energy consumption, Ether 2.0 has the potential to increase use cases and may make the platform more appealing to a wider audience.
Crypto Coins Rise
Ethereum and Ripple weren’t the only coins to break from traditional movements and go against the trend of Bitcoin’s movements.
Other coins that jumped between yesterday morning and today’s early trading are:
IOTA (IOTUSD)+29%
Stellar (XLMUSD) +70%
Litecoin (LTCUSD) +12%
Cardano (ADAUSD) +21%
This is in addition to other cryptocurrencies that rose in the last 24 hours, bringing the Crypto 10 Index, an exclusive composite which tracks leading digital coins, to a new high.
Cryptocurrency markets are no stranger to volatility. With these new high valuations, it remains to be seen where these leading coins will go and if the potential for future use cases can continue to lift these cryptocurrency’s valuations.
