The cryptocurrency community seems to have fully accepted Ripple as the number two player of the industry.
Meteoric rises can lead to devastating crashes, no matter what the asset is. Ripple had an incredible year in 2017, growing by over 30,000%.
There was no crash over the weekend, which means the current cryptocurrency market caps according to Coinmarketcap are Bitcoin at US$275 billion, Ripple at US$130 billion and Ethereum at US$108 billion.
Ripple's rise has been so great that co-founder Chris Larsen's wealth briefly passed Mark Zuckerberg's on Thursday according to Forbes. The Ripple price has declined a little since then, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Facebook founder was challenged for his rich-list top spot again soon.
In other currency news, cracks are starting to show in Bitcoin's claim as an alternative payment method.
Microsoft were one of the first major organisations to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Microsoft have now halted payments with Bitcoin, at least temporarily. According to an article by BleepingComputer, a Microsoft staffer told the website that it was because Bitcoin is an unstable currency.
Many users have reported that Bitcoin is no longer a payment option, so this report appears to be true. However, this also occurred in 2016, so the decision may be reversed quite quickly if there is negative feedback.
A volatile currency makes it hard for a business to accept payment in that form. The business could lose money on the transaction if the value of Bitcoin goes down in price by the time the transaction has been confirmed.
The Bitcoin price has recovered back to over US$16,000, so currency traders aren't too bothered by the latest setback it seems.
