XRP Takes ETH’s Place As Second Largest Cryptocurrency Despite Upcoming Ethereum Constantinople Upgrade

Ripple joins Blockchain Capital VC Fund with XRP investment worth $25 million price


ETH and XRP have been battling for the second position on CoinMarketCapital’s list of top cryptocurrencies for a long time now. More than once, XRP has taken Ethereum’s place being second only to BTC. Even if both coins are still far away from Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency per market capitalization, they are not ready to give up the second position anytime soon.


Ahead of the Ethereum Constantinople fork, the price of ETH spiked in the beginning of the year and it was able to reclaim its position from XRP which was hijacked in November during the BCH fork war. Last week, XRP overtook ETH again. Shortly after, ETH reclaimed this position. Yesterday, XRP pushed higher surpassing ETH by a few points. Most members of the cryptocurrency market believed that ETH would get a powerful boost thanks to the hype surrounding the fork. While it did get a minor boost, XRP remained relentless.


XRP Vs ETH: The War Continues


The Ethereum Constantinople upgrade that is going to occur on the 16th of January 2019 is going to reduce the block rewards for miners from two to three. This is one among the many upgrades the developers have in store. It’s also going to ignite a chain reaction that will eventually lead to the transition from the proof-of-work consensus algorithm to the proof-of-stake.


Ethereum (ETH) Price Today – BTC / USD
NamePrice24H %
ethereum
Ethereum(ETH)
$0.00-2.08%


After starting the year above $150, ETH was trading at low as $125 yesterday. It was down by up to 1.83% within a 24 hour period. Some analysts believe that this may have been due to a slight panic from investors who aren’t sure what effect the Constantinople upgrade will have on the network. Within a minute, the second largest cryptocurrency per market capitalization fell by 8% giving XRP the perfect window to take its place.


What To Expect From The Fork


The Ethereum Constantinople Upgrade or fork is going to start at block 7,080,000 on the 16th of January. The long-awaited network upgrade will see that the network block rewards are reduced for the second time since the blockchain was created. The first slash, Byzantium, took place in 2017 on the 16th of October. At the time, the price of ETH increased by 6% on the day of the upgrade. Later in the year, the historical bullish rally started taking ETH to its all-time-high of almost $1500.


Five Ethereum Improvement Proposals will be integrated in the upgrade. These improvements are going to tackle things related to mining, network speed, functionality and cost.


At the time of writing, several cryptocurrency exchanges had announced their support for the upgrade including but not limited to Poloniex, OKEx, Huobi, Binance, CEX.IO, Bittrex, and Cryptopia. These exchanges have urged users to allow sufficient time to pass after the upgrade before attempting deposits or withdrawals on the blockchain.


Ethereum (ETH) XRP And (XRP) Price Analysis

This morning, the top cryptocurrencies started trading in green against the USD. ETH, at the time of writing, was trading at $127.49. This means it is up by 7.63% against the USD and up by 4.86% against BTC. The trading volume over a 24 hour period is $2,770,029,799 and the market capitalization is $13,307,904,304.


XRP (XRP) Price Today – XRP / USD
NamePrice24H %
ripple
XRP(XRP)
$0.00-0.80%


XRP on the other hand is trading at $0.330082. This shows that it is up by 1.87% against the USD and down by 0.72 against BTC with a market capitalization of $13,546,693,398 and a trading volume of $476,736,065.

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