Recently, Ripple – the electronic payment protocol – has experienced a market cap surge due to an increase in the price of its native currency, XRP. The XRP price has continued to march in the right direction. During the past month, the XRP price rose more than 200%, expanding Ripple’s market cap and leaving litecoin in the dust. Now, Ripple has moved past Litecoin in CoinGecko’s comprehensive cryptocurrency rankings, indicating that Ripple’s market cap placement is well-deserved.

XRP Price Rise Gives Ripple $500 Million Market Cap

During September and October, the XRP price remained fairly constant at ~$.005 (CCN.com denominates the XRP price in USD since that is the coin’s largest trading pair), which seemed to indicate the coin had founded its mean value. However, during mid-November, the XRP price began to soar.

From November 15-28, the XRP price tripled, rising from about $.005 to $.015. It cooled off a bit during the next two days, hitting $.011 on November 30. However, the XRP price resumed its incline and continued to rise during the first two weeks of December–although the rate of increase slowed down. At press time, the XRP price was ~$.0164.

The recent XRP price rise has pushed Ripple’s market cap to an impressive value of ~$505 million at present. Granted, this pales in comparison to bitcoin’s ~$4.8 billion market cap, but it is remarkable for an altcoin. Moreover, Ripple’s market cap–which just a few months ago ranked 3rd–is now more than 4x as large as 3rd-ranked litecoin’s.

CoinGecko Analysis

Breaking the $500 million market cap mark is not the only good news for XRP holders. Ripple’s comprehensive ranking on CoinGecko–which measures and rates coins according to a number of metrics–is rising to meet its market cap. Ripple recently passed Litecoin to move into the #3 spot on CoinGecko’s metric charts (Bitcoin, of course, ranks 1st, and Dogecoin is clinging to 2nd despite experiencing some market cap struggles in recent months). Ripple has a 70% overall rating, which is bolstered by its impressive 90% developer activity score.

Disclosure: The author is paid in and holds investments in bitcoin. He is not invested in or affiliated with any of the altcoins discussed in this article. Any advice contained in this article is solely the opinion of the author and does not reflect the views of CCN.com. Neither the author nor CCN.com is liable for your investing decisions, so do your homework and never invest more than you are willing to lose.

Images from Ripple, CoinGecko, and Shutterstock.