RIPPLE’S price has skyrocketed over the past year, with some experts tipping XRP to catch up to bitcoin. But is Ripple the next bitcoin and how high could the price go?
Ripple’s XRP currency was trading at about $0.006 per token at the start of 2017, before a remarkable 12 months saw the cryptocurrency surge to an all time high of $3.84 on January 4 - an increase of nearly 64,000 percent.
Ripple has since slipped back down to below $2, but its strong overall performance has fuelled speculation that it could soon compete with bitcoin (BTC) at the top of the crypto markets.
A panel of cryptocurrency experts, brought together by Finder.com, predicted that Ripple will overtake Ethereum (ETH) to become the second biggest cryptocurrency by the end of the year.
According to the panel’s forecasts, bitcoin will remain top dog, with a market cap of $597.95 billion, followed by Ripple at $460.00 billion.
The experts expect XRP be trading at $2.93 by February 1, increasing dramatically to $5.06 by December 31, 2018.
But Fred Schebesta, Finder.com co-founder and one of the panel members, has warned the outlook might be bleaker for Ripple than his prediction suggests.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, he said: “My market cap prediction around Ripple is that they can make more coins and this to me means that the market cap will go up.
“However, this also means that they will burn coins at a fast rate. I'm actually not bullish on Ripple and have always thought it would crash. As it just did.”
Mr Schebesta explained that Ripple is a “long way off” catching bitcoin.
He said: “Ripple has yet to prove itself whereas bitcoin has a highly active and engaged community, huge awareness and massive amounts of people and businesses already using it.”
Ripple has started attracting the of attention of established financial institutions and has recently announced partnerships with the likes of American Express, Santander and MoneyGram.
But Mr Schebesta warned until the digital currency is fully embraced by banks, its price will likely keep fluctuating.
He said: “Ripple will remain super volatile because it hasn't been adopted by any banks yet, which it promised it would do.
“So this is going to dart around like crazy.”
He added his forecast was based on the assumption that Ripple “finds a place to be used” and other people start adopting it.”
Meanwhile, Ripple CEO Chris Larsen insists XRP is “completely different” to bitcoin.
Speaking to Bloomberg earlier this month, he said: “Bitcoin is, in a sort of way, a way to store value. Ripple is a completely different idea.
"We are using the same breakthrough technology but we are using it to build a currency agnostic value-exchange.
"This new technology, that really is a second generation bitcoin, enables value to be exchanged in the same way information is currently exchanged. And that’s a big deal."
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