XRP Nears Longest Stretch as World's Second-Largest Cryptocurrency

XRP has now officially held its ranking as the world's second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization for the longest period since 2016.

On Nov. 15, the market capitalization of XRP, a cryptocurrency long connected to San Francisco blockchain startup Ripple, reached $19.39 billion, enough to establish it as the world’s second largest cryptocurrency after overtaking ether (ETH), long the market's reigning number two asset.

This 11-day stretch is the longest XRP has spent at number two since it held the title for 13 days from Jan. 26 to Feb. 8 in 2016.

In fact, the dominance rate for XRP, an indicator that tracks the percent of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization contributed by the cryptocurrency, reached a 45-week high of on 12.74 on Nov. 20 (it has since retreated slightly to just above 11 percent). For comparison, bitcoin’s (BTC) dominance rate is currently 53.9 percent while the rate of ether, now the world's third-largest cryptocurrency registers 9 percent.

Notably, since XRP began its market share uptick on Nov. 15, the broader cryptocurrency market has witnessed a significant sell-off, losing nearly $90 billion and 40 percent of its total market capitalization to date.

Needless to say, the market rout has resulted in significant depreciation to many if not all cryptocurrencies against the U.S. dollar. XRP and ETH are reporting 22 percent and 37 percent respective losses in the 11-day span while the world's largest cryptocurrency is down 32 percent.

Despite XRP's advance in the market capitalization ranks, ETH, has recorded significantly more trading volume as of late. In the last 24 hours alone, ETH's exchange volume of $2.47 billion is nearly twice as large as XRP's $1.3 billion, according to CoinDesk's Crypto-Economic Explorer (CEX).

Disclosure: The author holds BTC, AST, REQ, OMG, FUEL, 1st and AMP at the time of writing.

Bitcoin Ripple image via Shutterstock