Ripple Approaching $2 as XRP Price Doubles in Weekly Trading

A week after the value of Ripple's native XRP token topped $1 for the first time in history, the cryptocurrency surged again today, rising 34 percent.

At press time, the token, used for transactions on the San Francisco startup's RippleNet cryptocurrency network, reached $1.87, a figure that was nearly double its listed price last week, data shows. The price rally arrived after a long period of inactivity in the market, which had held steady at $0.20 over the past six months.

As a result, the market capitalization of XRP is now catching up with those of ethereum and bitcoin, according to data site CoinMarketCap. XRP is now the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with the value of its combined token supply now $72 billion.

Data from CoinDesk indicates that much of today's price improvement comes from today's morning trading session (UTC 06:01 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.), where it recorded a 14.43 percent increase in the last six hours.

What's also notable is that global trading volume of XRP within 24 hours predominantly came from exchanges based in South Korea.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows that three South Korean exchanges, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit account for 31.5, 7.3, and 2.07 percent of the worldwide XRP trading, respectively. In addition, within these exchanges, each has more than half of its trading activities concentrating on XRP, data also shows.

The price rally also follows the South Korea government's newly issued policy that will ban cryptocurrency exchanges from allowing anonymous accounts, a move to curb market speculation in the country.