It's been a bit of a mixed bag for the crypto sector this year. Since Donald Trump won the presidential election, the regulatory environment has greatly improved, clearing up gray areas and paving a path for growth.
But other factors like the high-interest-rate environment and geopolitical uncertainty have hurt much of the sector. While tokens like Bitcoin and XRP (XRP 0.56%) have shined, other tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB -0.83%) haven't fared as well. But anything is possible in the volatile crypto sector, especially with more favorable legislation set to pass and the market forecasting rate cuts. Which cryptocurrency has a better chance of making you a millionaire -- XRP or Shiba Inu?
XRP: Potentially a major player in cross-border payments
Few cryptocurrencies have benefited more from Trump's win than XRP. Trump's win signaled a change in leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had been stricter under former President Joe Biden's administration. The SEC had sued Ripple, the company behind XRP, for allegedly selling XRP as an unregistered security in 2013. The case garnered intense interest from most crypto stakeholders because it could have set a precedent over the SEC's regulatory jurisdiction in the crypto sector.
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Once new leadership came in, the SEC dropped or settled most of its major crypto lawsuits, including the one against Ripple, although it did look like the company was headed for a favorable outcome in the case anyway. This not only removed a negative spotlight from XRP but also paved the way for things like an XRP-spot exchange-traded fund (ETF), which many expect to be approved in the U.S. this year. It also allowed Ripple to rejuvenate growth, and the company has been active, making acquisitions and launching its own stablecoin.
XRP, which has a circulating supply of more than 59 billion tokens, is the currency used to facilitate transfers for most of Ripple's activity. The company is focused on cross-border payments, particularly in the financial industry, where it already does business with many large traditional banks and institutional clients. Ideally, the more that Ripple grows and the more companies that use its products, we should see more use of XRP.
Shiba Inu: One of the main meme tokens
Shiba Inu piggybacked off of the meme craze started by Dogecoin (DOGE -1.02%) to become one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world. While the token has struggled this year, it's still the 19th-largest cryptocurrency by market value.
Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token, meaning it was built on Ethereum's blockchain and must follow a standard set of protocols that all ERC-20 tokens must abide by. Due to the growth of Shiba Inu and congestion on Ethereum's network, the founders of Shiba Inu created Shibarium, a Layer-2 solution built on top of Ethereum to ease some of the congestion on Ethereum's network caused by Shiba Inu transactions and ultimately lower the cost of these transactions.
Shibarium has become a popular place for decentralized applications, and there are now more than 1,200 on the layer. Initially, nearly 1 quadrillion in Shiba Inu tokens were created, but the circulating supply has been whittled down to about 589 trillion, which is still a huge amount. Investors would like to see the supply continue to decrease. Certain transactions of Shiba Inu burn tokens. In fact, recently, more than $1.3 billion tokens were burned in just a week's time. While the circulation is still huge, a bigger decrease could help the supply and demand dynamic of the token.
Which is more likely to make you a millionaire?
The crypto sector is highly volatile, so making price predictions is extremely difficult. Both XRP and Shiba Inu are still too volatile in my mind to take more than a smaller, more speculative position.
Both tokens also have drawbacks. Shiba Inu doesn't really have a great use case and is still largely living off its meme token popularity. Shibarium has added some legitimacy to the network, but not enough yet to make a real difference in the eyes of investors. XRP could become one of the main tokens used for cross-border payments, especially if Ripple continues to gain traction among mainstream financial institutions and institutional investors. But there is competition too, whether from stablecoins or other cryptocurrencies that can process as many, if not more, transactions per second.
If I had to pick one to bet on, I would pick XRP over Shiba Inu because XRP is already the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has a good use case with its specialty in cross-border payments, and has a strong support network with Ripple.
