A recent survey compiled by the cryptocurrency exchange BitMax indicates that the Japanese are quite fond of Ripple (XRP). Having to choose which their favorite digital asset is, most participants placed XRP close to Bitcoin and well above Ethereum.
The popular Japanese exchange posted the survey on Twitter to check among its followers which are their most preferred cryptocurrencies.
Somewhat expectedly, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap Bitcoin (in yellow) occupies the first spot with 26% of the votes. What’s perhaps more intriguing is that Ripple (XRP – in pink) comes very closes with 25%. The now-four-seeded digital asset by market cap has overcome Ethereum (in red) by a massive margin. Only 9% of all participants have voted in favor of ETH.
As the graph above displays, the remaining 40% of the votes were distributed among other popular altcoins. Those include the dual-layer blockchain project written in Java – NEM (XEM), one of the first Japanese coins that came as a hard fork of Litecoin – MonaCoin (Mona), and Nano – formerly known as RaiBlocks (XRB) employing its own technology called the block-lattice architecture.
However, it’s worth noting that the number of participants was relatively low – approximately 1,500 people – which could imply that the survey was not entirely comprehensive.
Ripple, the payment protocol and the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP, has been expanding its services lately. For instance, the firm signed two partnerships in Thailand alone with a local fintech firm called DeeMoney and with the country’s oldest bank – Siam Commercial Bank (SCB).
The bank created an application dubbed SCB EASY for cross-border payments, while the fintech company will utilize RippleNet for more efficient, cheaper, and faster international money transfers.
RippleNet Cloud, allowing banks to use Ripple technology entirely in the cloud, yesterday announced the signing of its first banking customer – the Brazilian Banco Rendimento.
The price of Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, however, hasn’t been performing as impressively as the company behind it. XRP, like most digital assets, plunged during the mid-March sell-offs and bottomed below $0.11. Although it has recovered to some extent since then and is currently trading at $0.192, it also recently registered its two-year low against the primary cryptocurrency – Bitcoin.
The lack of serious upside movements and the fact that Tether (USDT) continues minting new coins to cope with the demand from traders, led to a change of positions in May. As mentioned above, XRP the 4th largest crypto in terms of market capitalization as Tether surpassed it.
