Ethereum, the world's third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, hit a fresh record high on Sunday.
Ethereum was trading at $1,074.00 by 09:41 AM ET (14:41 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, after rising to peak of $1,085 earlier in the day.
It had a market cap of $107 billion, remaining in third place behind bitcoin, which has a market value of about $282 billion.
Bitcoin was trading at $16,551.00 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Bitcoin rose as high as $19,891 on 17 December on Bitfinex and to more than $20,000 on other exchanges.
However, from its all-time high reached in mid-December, the price dropped by almost half over the rest of the month before recovering.
Meanwhile, Ripple's XRP token was down 2.37% to $2.73 on the Poloinex exchange.
Prices retreated from last week’s record highs after Coinbase, one of the largest exchanges for cryptocurrencies said that it has not made a decision to add new currencies to its platform. This dampened recent speculation that it would include Ripple.
Ripple now has a market cap of $130 billion, in second place behind bitcoin.
Ripple sells blockchain technology, powered by its own cryptocurrency XPR, to banks and payment providers and other financial institutions to speed up cross-border payments.
Blockchain — otherwise known as distributed ledger technology — allows vast amounts of data to be stored on a dispersed network of computers around the world, rather than on one centralized server.
Prices have been boosted by news that Ripple has been conducting trials with a number of major financial institutions, including American Express and Santander. Prices have also gained momentum with investors looking at alternative digital currencies beyond bitcoin.
Ripple rose in value by more than 32,000% over the course of 2017. It began the year trading at around $0.006 and ended at $1.98.
Ripple’s gains in 2017 outstripped the gains of Ethereum and bitcoin, which rose by roughly 9,000% and 1,400%, respectively.
Ethereum has more going for it than Ripple in my opinion. Both have real applications other than as a potential investment, but Etheruem is much easier to access, and is much less centralized.
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