Can Ripple (XRP) Overtake Bitcoin (BTC) In 2018? - Part I

Global Stock Markets

Bitcoin’s trajectory of the last year has been nothing short of incredible. The continued record highs have attracted the attention of the media, the public, governments, banks, and many more. 

 

As more and more cryptocurrency millionaires popped up, more investors wanted a piece of the action, until we found ourselves in the midst of a massive crypto hype.

However, it’s not just bitcoin that captured the attention of millions around the world. Ripple quietly grew to prominence until a few weeks ago, when it spiked with over 36,000%, more than doubled in its price and quickly became one of the new darlings of the crypto world.

Ripple’s boom followed shortly after several international banks, as well as Korean and Japanese credit card firms, stated that they would use Ripple technology to pilot test projects.

At the time of writing, ripple (XRP) is worth an average of $2.20 and it is available on several major cryptocurrency exchange platform. Granted, it pales in comparison with bitcoin’s price of $13,800 per BTC, but it’s not so shabby when considering that ripple grew from a humble $0.006 just a year ago. In addition, the cryptocurrency’s sheer supply has ensured that it is currently the world’s second most lucrative cryptocurrency.

However, this begs the question, why exactly did ripple grow as much as it did in the last year, and does it have the potential to overthrow the grandfather of cryptocurrencies?

What is Ripple?

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that is underpinned by a larger Blockchain network. Similarly, the ripple has its own payment network that is referred to as XRP, although even the most avid of ripple advocates simply call it “ripple.”

Ripple is also underpinned by a larger Blockchain network, which consists of several technological processes that ensure that all transactions are recorded securely online. This underlying Blockchain network is widely considered to be the future of payment systems.

However, this is where most similarities between the two end. Ripple was established in 2012, but initially, it was not designed to act as a form payment. Instead, the network was created to verify and record assets, including its own virtual currency, XRP.

Bitcoin was designed to be a decentralized peer-to-peer monetary system, where community members gave their own computer processing powers to verify and create new blocks and mine new Bitcoin, and as a reward received Bitcoin proportional to their efforts.

In contrast, the ripple was established with a ready limited amount of 99 billion XRP ready for distribution which could be either traded or used as a means to navigate between other assets which would allow users to evade transactions fees.

Quicker than Bitcoin

The team behind ripple have previously stated that their network has several advantages over the bitcoin core network. Most significantly is that the ripple network offers much quicker and cheaper transactions. The average transaction conduct on the ripple network takes about 3 seconds and costs one-millionth of XRP.

In addition, bitcoin has lost utility due to its exorbitant transaction fees and times. However, the ripple network has encouraged interesting partnerships with traditional financial institutions such as UBS, American Express, and Santander as the ripple network has the potential to be used practically in foreign exchange situations.