Could XRP Actually Flip Bitcoin? Former Ripple CTO Says Yes – But the Math Is Brutal

Ripple veteran David Schwartz recently said quite convincingly that XRP could eventually overtake bitcoin by market capitalization. However, he outlined the significance of the right conditions and that such a development wouldn’t come from BTC’s deterioration.

As such, we decided to go a bit deeper into the numbers and see what actually has to happen for Ripple’s token to emerge ahead of the current market leader.

Can XRP Overcome BTC?

The cryptocurrency community has long been dabbling with the question of whether (at least) one altcoin can replace BTC as the largest digital asset by market cap. For almost a decade, that alt representative was Ethereum (ETH), which didn’t exactly come close several years ago, but there was speculation about a potential Flippening. However, it never materialized.

At first, the broader crypto market would have to be dramatically more successful. Second, XRP would grow considerably faster than BTC due to the XRP Ledger’s functionality, adoption, and real-world usage.

A Loooong Way to Go

Let’s go directly to math and see where the issue stems from, as the numbers are daunting at current prices. BTC’s market is at about $1.55 trillion today, compared with approximately $87 billion for XRP. This makes the market leader around 18 times larger.