XRP, the cryptocurrency from Ripple is one of the winners today, with its price rising more than five percent in the last 24 hours and surpassing Bitcoin Cash again as the third cryptocurrency according to market capitalization. This rise was supposedly motivated by the announcement of the formation of a credit card consortium between Japanese banks and one subsidiary of Ripple.
On the other hand, the majority of the cryptocurrency market, including bitcoin, went down by more than five percent in most cases. The reason could be found in the ungrounded news about the supposed closure of exchanges in South Korea.
XRP reached the price of 1.49 US dollars per coin and a market capitalization of more than 57 billion dollars, according to CoinMarketCap. In 24 hours, the Ripple cryptocurrency moved more than 3.4 billion dollars worldwide. The majority of the transactions were performed on the Bithumb exchange, more than 35% of them. Binance follows with a little bit over 10%. Bittrex and Poloniex are next with almost 10 percent of the transactions, according to CoinGecko.
The major exchange currencies used for the transactions are the South Korean won (KRW, with more than 50%), bitcoin (BTC, with more than 29%) and the US dollar (USD, with more than 6 percent). This clearly shows the major impulse is coming from South Korea when it comes to the rise of Ripple in the last 24 hours.
This rise was probably motivated by the alliance established with the companies SBI HOlding in South Korea and Japan. This news recently pushed the value of XRP to more than one dollar. On December 27th, SBI Ripple Asia, a subsidiary of Ripple announced the creation of a consortium to develop credit card payment platforms based on the blockchain technology. This consortium was created between SBI Holdings Inc, Credit Saison Co and Mitsui Sumitomo Card Co.
The rest of the cryptocurrency market is correcting the prices in relation to the US dollars. In the case of bitcoin, it dropped by more than seven percent in 24 hours, to around 14 thousand dollars, according to CoinMarketCap.
The total decline of the cryptocurrency market is more than 2.5% in less than 24 hours, despite the rising tendency. Bitcoin dominates the market with 43% and the rise of Ripple alleviated the decline of the entire cryptocurrency market.
Mass media could be blamed for the decline. They published a news about the supposed prohibition of the exchanges in South Korea. It was a distorted news, but still widely spread. On the other hand, the South Korean government expanded its regulations towards the cryptocurrency exchanges in order to protect the investors and prevent fraudulent use of the cryptocurrencies for criminal acts.
