Ripple Will Not Supplant Bitcoin If Its Price Hits $7
CNBC's report on Ripple and Bitcoin this week continues to take effect in hereto unforeseen ways. We spoke yesterday about the segment on "Fast Money" that used the trade site Poloniex to buy one massive amount of Ripple at one time, live on television. Today we're having a chat about what's wrong with the way in which the traditional approach toward stock prices isn't going to fly here in our future full of cryptocurrency.CNBC suggested this week that "Ripple will be bigger than bitcoin if it hits $7." The term "bigger" only applies to one unique situation and from one single perspective. First, Ripple (XRP) would need to grow to a USD worth of $6.57 – according to CNBC's report on Monday. If that happened, Ripple's market capitalization would be bigger than that of Bitcoin – again, at the time that report was first released.
When our article here was being written, one Bitcoin was worth $14,929.20 USD according to Coin Market Cap (dot com). Market capitalization of Bitcoin was $250,691,126,400 USD. Circulating supply of Bitcoin was 16,792,000 BTC, and max supply was 21,000,000 BTC.
At the same time, one Ripple coin was worth $2.34 USD, and market capitalization was $90,656,184,597 USD. Since yesterday, the price has fallen nearly 5% – and even more compared to what it was a few days ago. Then – here's the key – the big difference between Bitcoin and Ripple in this particular respect: coin supply.
Circulating supply of Ripple coin right this minute is 38,739,144,847 XRP. Total supply is 99,993,093,880 XRP, and max supply is 100,000,000,000 XRP. A whole LOT of coins are locked away at the moment. When they're released, there'll be significant changes in the market value of the coin from that point forward. For now, the volatility of basically every coin in the cryptocurrency universe makes for a fine profit for speculators – provided they know how to surf.
As with all articles about currency, cryptocurrency, blockchain, bitcoin, or any related subject matter, SlashGear does not intend for this article to be construed as investment advice. Seek out your own investment specialist – everything we're writing here is news for news' sake, not to be used to cash in, invest up, or go broke with. All actions taken before, during, and after reading this article are the reader's responsibility and the reader's responsibility only.