Ripple Price Forecast: Factors Suggest XRP Cryptocurrency Could Hit $1
What’s Behind Ripple Cryptocurrency Price?
While most headlines in the cryptocurrency space involve Bitcoin or Ethereum, an increasing number of investors are thinking about investing in Ripple, the bank-focused blockchain company that is taking the crypto world by storm. With that in mind, I’ve put together this report with a complete Ripple price prediction in 2018.
I know the names, tokens, and details can become overwhelming. Blockchain technology is widely misunderstood in part because the industry is so young; so the articles “explaining” it are still technical and full of jargon. I’ll do my best to fix that.
But there’s another reason that blockchain is so hard to understand—it is radically different from anything that’s come before it.
Ripple is certainly part of this story, and not just as a Bitcoin-imitator. It is much more than that.
There are fundamental differences between Ripple and Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Ethereum and Ripple. It’s not enough to say “Ah! Forget these crypto coins or whatever they are called! They’re more trouble than they’re worth!”
Ripple is up 3,868% from its opening price in 2013. Even in its current lull, Ethereum prices are up 5,460% in the last two years. Can you really afford to pass up these gains?
I write about investments for a living and I rarely see four-digit growth in two or three years. Those are like shooting stars on the stock market, yet they happen on a monthly basis in the crypto world.
I think the risk is potentially worth the reward, hence this investigation.
Ripple Price Prediction 2018
The first thing to know is that Bitcoin was viewed with hostility by many banks. Bitcoin wants to eradicate them as the “middlemen” of transactions, which obviously represents a ton of money for the banks. They like making money every time we use a piece of plastic.
Bitcoin is fundamentally opposed to that kind of top-down control, in which the banks are at the top and we are at the bottom. Its idea is to decentralize the payments process.
Bitcoin also wants to increase transparency, which as we all know is contrary to the modus operandi of many banks. Secrecy is, and perhaps always has been, closely tied to banking.
Also Read: Bitcoin Price Prediction 2018: Should You Invest in Bitcoin?
That’s why it was so shocking to see Ripple raise $55.0 million in venture capital from a bunch of banks and other financial firms. These were the exact middlemen that looked down their nose at Bitcoin—so why did they love Ripple so much?
It’s about control.
In Bitcoin transactions, a record of the transaction is recorded on “the public distributed ledger,” which is just a fancy way of saying a universal list that is shared across the network of Bitcoin computers. Since no one person owns all the computers involved, power is distributed.
This shattering of power is essential to Bitcoin. It’s an open secret that the core community of developers got on board because they lost trust in the global financial system, so the success or failure of Bitcoin is tied to a political objective.
They need to get rid of central banks. They need to remove middlemen from transactions. They need to draw on a critical mass of vendors through popular support.
That is an awfully high bar for success. I’ve always said that Bitcoin hurt its own potential by aiming so high.
Ripple’s aims are, by comparison, much more modest, which is why my Ripple price prediction for 2018 might seem overly generous.
The company is working to smooth out the settlement process between existing banks and financial institutions (using their XRP token, of course). Plus, their system doesn’t allow for the kind of anonymity that made Bitcoin popular on the black market.
In other words, there is an added measure of control in Ripple. But I don’t care about the purity of the technology as much as I care about its potential to succeed in the real world.
Banks from China, Japan, India, Switzerland, Australia, America, and Canada are already working with Ripple. There are literally dozens of partners lining up to take the best parts of blockchain technology and integrate them into their firms.
To me, that looks like a successful business model. Don’t throw a Molotov cocktail through someone’s window. Just figure out what they need, how to work with them, and then go laughing to the bank.
Ripple Price Chart History
Like all cryptocurrencies, Ripple experienced a fierce tailwind in May. It lifted straight off the ground and took flight, reaching $0.414795 at one point. I realize that the Ripple XRP price doesn’t have an impressive four-digit price like Bitcoin, but don’t let that fool you.
Investing is about the percentage gain. It is a lot easier to double the Ripple price from $0.41 to $0.82 than the Bitcoin price from $1,900 to $3,800.
So don’t let size confuse you. Or if you must, look to market capitalization. It’s a more honest reflection of where each currency stands.
Bitcoin has the largest market cap, at $31.29 billion; Ethereum is next, at $14.03 billion; and Ripple gets the bronze, at $6.82 billion. But don’t forget that Ripple has raised about $100.0 million worth of actual money from its venture capital (VC) backers.
Should You Invest in Ripple Cryptocurrency?
Now, let’s get to the meaty questions like “Is Ripple better than Bitcoin?”
Here’s my take on it.
I’m extremely bullish on blockchain, not Bitcoin. There is still room to the upside for BTC prices, but the incessant Bitcoin volatility suggests that it can never become a global currency. Money needs to be stable and Bitcoin is anything but stable.
So Bitcoin has a low likelihood of succeeding.
Meanwhile, Ripple is not trying to become a global currency. It is working with existing powerbrokers to become a modern blockchain-based settlement system. It has a high likelihood of succeeding, hence the high Ripple price prediction for 2018.
Faced with those two options, I’m almost always going to pick the likelier outcome. It’s just a matter of odds for me, not a philosophical battle about good versus evil, us versus the central banks. I have no interest in that kind of political fight.
I just want to make money. Right now the XRP price looks deliciously favorable to that objective.
