The ripple price continued to outperform other top-tier coins as the cryptocurrency markets made slight gains against their previous-day levels. Cryptocurrency Market Cap Nears $600 BillionFriday’s contribution to the recovery was not as pronounced as the one fate dealt the markets on Thursday, but the cryptocurrency market cap nevertheless climbed to $592 billion, a $21 billion gain that works out to an increase of about four percent. Source: CoinMarketCapBitcoin Price Trades SidewaysThe bitcoin price spent the majority of the day fluctuating between $10,600 and $11,800 and is currently trading at $11,637, placing it toward the higher end of that spectrum. Bitcoin now has a market cap of $201.3 billion, which represents a 24-hour increase of two percent. Bitcoin Price ChartEthereum Price Holds Above $1,000Like bitcoin, ethereum traded sideways on Friday but ended the day on a slight incline. At present, the ethereum price is $1,060, which is an increase of about four percent from yesterday and translates into a $105.7 billion market cap. Ethereum Price ChartRipple Price Outperforms the IndexRipple, meanwhile, outperformed the index for the second consecutive day. Since briefly falling below $0.90 on Wednesday, the ripple price has increased by nearly 100 percent. Ripple’s strong showing is likely connected to investor optimism over the increasing number of financial institutions who are adopting Ripple’s blockchain technology. While only one major firm — MoneyGram — has implemented the XRP token itself, investors appear willing to bet that others will integrate it in the future. Ripple Price ChartAt the time of writing, the ripple price was $1.64, which constitutes a single-day gain of 10 percent and provides XRP with a circulating market cap of $65.6 billion. Altcoins Post Mixed ReturnsAltcoins rose a combined $14 billion on Friday, but many coins and tokens made little movement or even dipped back into the red. Bitcoin cash and EOS each rose less than one percent, while cardano made a slight decrease to $0.64. Litecoin rose by about one-and-a-half percent, but its price continues to trade below $200. NEO posted the worst performance among top 10-cryptocurrencies, but investors are unlikely to be concerned about this two percent decline as the “Chinese Ethereum” is still valued at $145. Next to ripple, the day’s top return came from NEM, which rose just under 10 percent to lift its price back above dollar parity. Stellar rounded out the top 10 with a one percent increase to $0.51