It has been another positive day of trade for cryptocurrency traders.
In afternoon trade the crypto market has added another US$5.7 billion to its value since this morning, bringing the value of the entire market up to US$359.9 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
While a 1.5% move higher by the bitcoin (BTC) price has contributed to this gain, the biggest driver has been surging altcoin prices.
At the time of writing the Ethereum (ETH) price is up 6% over the last 24 hours to US$565.33, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is 8% higher at US$956.05, Litecoin (LTC) is 3% higher to US$144.98, and EOS (EOS) has climbed 6% during the period to US$9.62.
But the biggest mover by some distance has been the Ripple (XRP) price. At the time of writing the Ripple price is up 12.6% since this time yesterday to 81.9 U.S. cents. Incredibly, this means XRP has risen over 33% in the space of a week.
Why is Ripple (XRP) on fire?
Ripple has been on a roll since banking giant Santander announced last week that it had launched a blockchain-based foreign exchange service that uses Ripple's technology to make same-day international money transfers.
The Santander One Pay FX platform was launched initially in Spain, the U.K., Brazil and Poland, but is expected to be rolled out to other markets in the coming months.
Traders appear to see the growing usage of Ripple's technology in the mainstream as a sign that XRP has a bright future ahead of it.
What's next?
In terms of technology, I think Ripple is arguably the best out there and vastly superior to bitcoin.
However, whether it will replace bitcoin as the world's major cryptocurrency in the future, only time will tell. But it will certainly be interesting to see how things develop over the next 12 months.
