Ripple veteran David Schwartz has entertained one of the XRP community’s most ambitious scenarios: XRP eventually overtaking Bitcoin by market capitalization.
During a recent appearance on X's "Spaces," Schwartz argued that an XRP “flippening” is possible, but he attached an important caveat to the prediction.
Such a scenario, according to the longtime XRP Ledger architect and Ripple CTO emeritus, would be more likely to happen because XRP surges than because Bitcoin collapses.
XRP could potentially capture a disproportionate share of that growth because of characteristics such as transaction speed and greater functionality compared to Bitcoin.
The XRP Ledger was designed from the outset as a faster and more scalable alternative to Bitcoin for payments.
It's all about perspective
Earlier this year, Schwartz recalled that even a rally to $0.25 seemed implausible to him when XRP was trading at roughly $0.006.
Schwartz said that he sold some XRP around $0.10 because the valuation already seemed extraordinarily high at the time.
He made a similar comparison with Bitcoin, recalling that $100 BTC once seemed almost absurd.
At the same time, Schwartz stressed that such comparisons have an important weakness: XRP's market capitalization today is vastly larger than Bitcoin's was when BTC first crossed $100.
XRP once got surprisingly close to Bitcoin
There is historical precedent for XRP dramatically narrowing Bitcoin's lead.
During the extraordinary cryptocurrency rally of late 2017 and early 2018, XRP surged into second place and became Bitcoin's closest major challenger.
XRP has notably overtaken Ethereum before. The most memorable flip occurred in late December 2017.
Back then, XRP's capitalization had jumped to roughly $86 billion, putting it comfortably ahead of Ethereum at $73 billion and making XRP the world's second-largest cryptocurrency. XRP remained ahead at the end of the year.
At a price of $1.42, XRP currently has a market capitalization of approximately $89.1 billion, making it the fifth-largest cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, is changing hands at roughly $78,693 with a market capitalization of approximately $1.58 trillion.
That means Bitcoin is currently worth about 17.7 times more than XRP by market capitalization.
