Wednesday marked the second consecutive day of a giant cryptocurrency price slump, with some tokens faring better than others. One of the major losses came from Ripple, the finance industry-focused network, which saw the value of its XRP tokens slump by 23.93 percent over a 24 hour period.
The movement points to a wider drop in XRP’s value. Overall, the cryptocurrency has moved from a high of $3.84 on January 4 with a total market cap of $148.7 billion, to a low of $1.05 on Tuesday with a market cap of $40.5 billion, a staggering 72.66 percent token value decrease in the space of just under two weeks.
The token was boosted at the start of the year by news that a number of financial institutions were considering its adoption for simple money transfers, including three Japanese credit card companies. However, even as it reached all-time highs to take second place in market valuation, some cautioned that the price was out of step with its real value.
Last week Ripple made its first significant customer announcement for xRapid. It said that MoneyGram will use the technology and XRP to speed up and reduce the cost of transferring money. Viamericas, a money transmitter focused on sending money to Latin America and Asia, said that that it's testing XRP.
Seagate, through an investment in Ripple in 2016, could own a stake worth close to $8 billion, according to a report last week from Deep Value Research. The stock has rallied 20 percent since the report on Jan. 8, even though the company has said nothing about it publicly.
Following an interview to Jeremy Liew he said
"It's absolutely unprecedented, who's best known for his early bet on Snap. It hadn't been material until the end of last quarter, so now we have to think it through."
Ripple took 29% since yesterday while Ripple's ability to practically print money puts it in an admirable place, the start-up has attracted plenty of controversy in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.