Ripple briefly overtakes Ethereum as the No. 2 crypto

Markets Insider

• Ripple's XRP briefly passed Ethereum on Friday as the No. 2 cryptocurrency by market cap.
• XRP's market cap reached $73.65 billion before the digital coin pared its gains.
• XRP has gained more than 5,000% in 2017.

A red-hot close to 2017 briefly caused Ripple's XRP to overtake Ethereum as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Ripple, which focuses on bank transfers, sported gains of more than 40% at one point Friday, propelling it to a record high and a market cap of $73.65 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. The dethroning was also captured in a tweet from @WillyKracket:

Twitter/@WillyKracket

XRP has since pared its gains and slipped back into the third spot in terms of size.

The cryptocurrency, which is up about 61% over the past week and more than 5,000% this year, has been on a tear since Ripple's Asian subsidiary and a group of Japanese credit-card companies announced a new consortium Wednesday. The consortium aims to identify how blockchain and distributed-ledger technology can be deployed in credit-card payments.

The news of the consortium follows a bullish month for the coin, which has been propelled to new heights by interest from Asia, according to reporting by Forbes.

"Asians are going mad for Ripple," Alexey Ivanov, the CEO and cofounder of Polynom Crypto Capital, a Moscow-based cryptocurrency and blockchain investment fund manager, told Forbes.

Frank Chaparro contributed to this story.