The Ripple (XRP) price has been totally smashed, with the price down by 16.7% in 24 hours.
Ripple lost its title as the second biggest cryptocurrency when CoinMarketCap decided to exclude Korean exchanges from its averages, which resulted in Ripple's price being shown at a lower price.
Since that change the Ripple price has been in freefall. In-fact, the Ripple price has declined by over 50% since 4 January 2018.
Holders of the cryptocurrency who have owned the currency for over a year have still made gigantic gains, but recent investors are sitting on very heavy losses.
I think it was a fair move by CoinMarketCap to exclude the Korean exchanges. The site is mainly for English readers and the elevated Korean prices are not reflective of what English traders would be able to achieve.
One of the Ripple founders, Chris Larsen, had briefly overtaken Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's wealth last week, but Mr Larsen's wealth has plummeted significantly since.
Regardless of whether Ripple's price booms or busts from here, it still has no intrinsic value compared to other assets. This makes it impossible to value using conventional metrics and therefore could be worthless, or may rise to $5 per Ripple coin in the future.
The cryptocurrency mania is truly fascinating to watch, but I could never bring myself to 'invest' in any coin. Perhaps in the distant future Ripple or Bitcoin may be a globally accepted currency, but they have been hijacked by speculators. I'd much rather invest in Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) or Gentrack Group Ltd (ASX: GTK).
