In what has been one of the largest single purges of the cryptocurrency markets this year, Ripple’s XRP token has surpassed Ethereum in terms of market capitalization.

The Bottom Just Fell Out Of The Bottom

Just when we thought that things couldn’t get much worst and the bottom was in, the bottom fell out and markets nosedived again. Over the past 24 hours crypto markets have dumped almost $30 billion as they fell from around $210 billion to a 2018 low of $180 billion. The dust has settled at around $185 billion but the carnage in the altcoin camps is plain to see. Trade volume has doubled to $24 million but it is all flowing one way, out of the digital door.

Ethereum’s loss has been Ripple’s gain as XRP has finally usurped ETH and taken the second spot on the market cap charts. Ethereum has been on the floor for weeks now but yesterday’s 16% slide sent its market cap below $18 billion for the first time since July 2017. The price of ETH plunged to match its 2018 low of $174 and it has failed to recover much from that level.

Conversely XRP fell around 14% at the same time but has managed to make a better recovery making its total 24 hour loss around 10%. Before yesterday’s dump, XRP had made a gain of 15% on the month compared to Ethereum’s loss of almost 4% over the same thirty day period. As a result the market cap of XRP has not fallen as much which has pushed it into second place according to Coinmarketcap.

At the time of writing XRP has a market capitalization of $18.4 billion compared to Ethereum’s $18.2 billion so things are still pretty close. Bitcoin has not escaped unscathed this time around as its market cap has dropped below $100 billion for the first time since October 2017. Aside from Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash, some of the biggest losers have been IOTA, Ethereum Classic, Cardano and Monero, all losing 16 – 18 percent.

As new yearly lows are being hit, the crypto twitter-sphere is still dominated by Bitcoin Cash wars and more mudslinging. Some analysts have alluded to a big dump before bulls can get in, others called a Bitcoin bottom at $6k. Most have been wrong so far, so at this stage in the game it is largely guesswork. The crypto winter could well extend deep into 2019 and only the fittest will survive.

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