While bitcoin took a dive on December 27th, ripple rose 20% to reach an all-time record high of $1.43, making it the third largest digital currency in circulation, behind bitcoin and ethereum, with a market cap of $54bn.

This spectacular rise came on the heels of a news release from SBI Holdings, a financial services company based in Tokyo, that they have set up a consortium with Japanese credit card firms to make use of blockchain technology. It was not made clear to what extent Ripple would be involved in the consortium, but several Japanese and South Korean banks have recently been testing their blockchain platform.

Ripple is a start-up company based in San Francisco, which uses blockchain technology as a platform for a faster, cross-border payments network. The DLT system vastly speeds up transactions, with a settlement speed of approximately 4 seconds per transaction, as opposed to ethereum’s 2 minutes and bitcoin\'s 1 hour. The Ripple blockchain is used worldwide by more than 100 financial institutions, including digital asset exchanges and banks, with network participants using a digital coin for transactions called XRP. Ripple has a 61% holding of the existing 100 billion XRP, which at the current high equates to around $87.23bn worth.