Based on CoinMarketCap, the cryptocurrency increased 20 percent on Wednesday to record peaks of $1.43, taking the title of the third largest digital currency by market capitalization which is valued at $54 billion, trailing behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The gains were due to some reports that SBI Holdings, a Tokyo based financial services company, and it subsidiary, the SBI Ripple Asia, declared the development of a “consortium” with some of the Japanese credit card companies to eventually utilize blockchain tech, as stated in an online translation of the release.
In January of 2016, SBI Holdings and Ripple created SBI Ripple Asia. Although Ripple’s involvement in the latest consortium was not explained in detail.
Bitcoin dropped 5 percent while Ethereum fell 1 percent on Wednesday, based on Coinbase data.
Ripple is the official name of a San Francisco based startup utilizing blockchain tech to create payment networks for digital assets, banks and other financial institutions. Network clients can make transactions using a digital coin named XRP.
The startup currently owns 61 percent of the 100 billion XRP that are in circulation. During Wednesday’s peaks, this gave Ripple approximately $87.23 billion worth of cryptocurrency.
Ripple’s selling point is XRP’s 4 second settlement speed against the over 2 minutes settlement speed for Ethereum and more than an hour for bitcoin.
Ripple is considered as one of the best performer this year, gaining more than 20,000 percent from their 2016 records ending at 0.64 percent. In contrast to its competitors, Ethereum is up approximately 9,200 percent this year and roughly 1,500 percent gains for bitcoin.