Since the creation of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin (BTC) has been the undisputed king. But now it faces a challenger in the form of Ripple XRP.
But there are other cryptocurrencies that have developed and gained a high market cap. And one of them is Ripple XRP, a cryptocurrency aimed at the financial sector.
In this article, we try to answer whether Ripple (XRP) can become as valuable as Bitcoin. At the time of writing, the BTC price oscillates around $28,500, and its capitalization is approximately $553 billion. XRP is trading at $0.46 with a capitalization of $24 billion.
Can 1 XRP Equal 1 Bitcoin?
It is impossible for XRP to ever overtake Bitcoin’s rate. XRP would then have to increase 50,000 times while Bitcoin would stand still. The more coins available, the lower the value of one coin will be.
Bitcoin has a limited supply – 21 million coins. This is what makes its value soar. Ripple, on the other hand, has a much larger supply, namely 100 billion coins.
More realistic, but also still difficult to achieve, is that Ripple’s market cap will catch up with Bitcoin. XRP would then have to increase “only” 23 times.
On March 21 2017, XRP reached its highest ever percentage share in the entire cryptocurrency market. For a very short time, over 19% of the value of all cryptocurrencies consisted of XRP, and Bitcoin’s dominance plunged to 47%.
Bitcoin currently accounts for 45% of the market.
But can Ripple become as valuable as Bitcoin? To answer this question, we must first look at the factors that determine the value of cryptocurrencies.
The most important of these is the number of users and acceptance as a means of payment. The more people use and accept a given cryptocurrency, the greater its value will be.
At the moment, Bitcoin has a much greater acceptance than Ripple. BTC is the most used cryptocurrency in the world while Ripple is mainly used in the financial sector. However, this does not mean that Ripple has no potential to increase in value.
Banks and Financial Institutions
The greater the demand, the higher the value will be. Bitcoin currently has greater demand than Ripple, but keep in mind that demand for Ripple has skyrocketed in recent years.
The fact that Ripple is targeting the financial sector and facilitating payments between different currencies could lead to more companies and banks using it. This, in turn, can lead to increased demand and therefore higher XRP value. For example, some central banks use Ripple’s services to develop their own CBDC.
Please note that they use Ripple as the company and not necessarily XRP as the cryptocurrency. It makes you think – if Ripple actually became worth more than Bitcoin, the banking world won and Bitcoin lost.
But that is irrelevant if Ripple loses its lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is the project’s first challenge on its way to overthrowing Bitcoin from its throne.
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