By Darryn Pollock

The digital currencies race in the first half of the year has been won by Ripple as its token, XRP that has finished the second financial quarter priced at $0.26, up 3,977 percent year-to-date. At the moment it has dropped to around $0.19, but its growth still seems impressive.

Ripple has boomed across the cryptocurrency marketplace as it recorded $30 mln in new transactions in the second quarter of this year alone, as well as saw the token listed on 25 new exchanges. It also boasts the third-largest market capitalization in the space — behind Bitcoin and Ether.

Partnerships

XRP is different to a few of the other main players in the digital currency space as it is owned largely by Ripple. When the company announced in May that it had plans to structure the sale of its currency the interest spiked. Miguel Vias, Ripple's head of XRP markets explains:
“With respect to XRP, we are incredibly focused on international payments, I think we are probably the only digital asset that has a clear use case with respect to what we are trying to do with the asset."
As for the future, Vias hinted that new announcements may be forthcoming. Vias told CNBC:
"In this quarter, you will see some very interesting developments with respect to our partnership in payments, with respect to XRP in particular."

Staggering growth

On Jan. 1, XRP was valued at $0.0065, but towards the end of March and at the beginning of the second quarter, the price spiked to a high of $0.35 on May 18. It closed the quarter down, valued at $0.26 and to date has dropped off more sitting around $0.19. Despite being down, the growth is still admirable. As for Vias, he believes there is still a big future for Ripple despite the volatility of the entire cryptocurrency market. “What we have seen is an embracing of digital assets broadly by really established institutions. When you have folks like the [Bank of England], which did a [proof of concept] with us, as well as the Bank of Japan coming out and saying, we are considering this as legal tender at some point — when you see those developments, you can't help but feel that we are on the right path, that interest is going to continue to grow," Vias added.