XRP & ETH: Who’s the Loser?

Last week, the Ripple Token (XRP) market capitalization exceeded ethereum (ETH) capitalization. The asset took the second place of the rating and grew in price over the month, even against the background of a falling market. Against the backdrop of this news, fiery discussions have arisen in the crypto community regarding the future of Ripple.

The crypto community’s opinion on XRP is divided. Some declare a cloudless future of a digital asset, others predict a fiasco. Those who believe in assets include CNBC host, Onchain founder and cryptocurrency trader Ran Neuner. He posted a tweet calling to forget about bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash and focus on investing in XRP.

Some users, however, questioned this recommendation, since Neuner was one of those analysts who were very wrong in predicting the price of bitcoin this year. He believed that during 2018, the price of bitcoin would have reached $50,000 and not stop there.

In turn, Mati Greenspan from eToro notes that Ripple prefers to use Twitter as a tool to promote the brand on the network, and there much noise coming from there.

Someone suggested a very radical development of the events. Ripple Riddler wrote that by the end of 2018, XRP will become No.1 cryptocurrency on market capitalization. Some commentators agreed with this position and decided that XRP would oust bitcoin from the market.

There are other points of view, too. Craig Wright, the leader of the Bitcoin SV community, also spoke on this issue. He believes that XRP is far from the utilitarian token, it is used exclusively as an investment asset. If regulators consider that XRP is a security, it will lead to the mass sale of tokens and, accordingly, to a sharp drop in the exchange rate.

On the one hand, Ripple has big plans for a further development. In particular, the CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse said that the startup does not plan to enter into a partnership agreement with SWIFT, but intends to bypass the international banking system in the payment processing market. The company also hopes that SEC does not recognize XRP as a security. Also, the Coinbase Custody service, which provides services for the safe storage of cryptocurrency assets for institutional investors, officially added XRP to the list of supported assets. XRP is the ninth supported asset of the platform.

Therefore, the growth in the market may seem to be the beginning of some serious changes or a new bull rally for XRP. However, the potential of XRP as a bitcoin killer is still questionable due to the lack of decentralization of the blockchain. The network is managed by Ripple, the blockchain itself, in fact, is a faster and cheaper alternative to bank transfers.

But in any case, the situation with a cryptocurrency, which moved to the third place, is less rosy. The ethereum network hash rate reached its lowest level since February of this year at 236 TH / s, after rising to a peak around 297 TH / s this summer. Until August, the ethereum hash rate only grew but has since declined significantly.

The ethereum inflation rate remains very high at about 7%, which can be explained by a more rapid decline in its rate compared to other cryptocurrencies. The current dynamic also makes it possible to suggest that the miners of ethereum are going through hard times.

This is also evidenced by the data analysis of the trading company Susquehanna. Analysts say that the monthly income of the ethereum miners in November reached $0. In their opinion, the main factor reducing GPU mining profitability was the annual decline in the second cryptocurrency rate from $1,350 in January to $152 at the current moment.

Subscribe to our Telegram channel to stay up to date on the latest crypto and blockchain news.