All in all, the crypto market is having a good year. There have certainly been ups and downs, given some of the volatility, but if you look back to Donald Trump's presidential election victory last November, many of the big cryptocurrencies are up significantly since then, although not all.
Trump's new regulatory regime has ushered in a more welcoming environment for cryptocurrencies and businesses focused on the sector. This has made many investors more bullish on crypto's future than ever.
Two of the more popular cryptocurrencies, XRP (XRP -5.12%) and Shiba Inu (SHIB -5.84%), have been on different paths, with XRP soaring since Trump's election win and Shiba Inu struggling to gain traction. Which cryptocurrency is more likely to be a millionaire maker: XRP or Shiba Inu?
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XRP: Can it take a share of international payments?
XRP has been one of the best-performing cryptos since Trump's win -- if not the best. The token has clearly benefited from a change in leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which led the agency to drop an appeal in a long-standing lawsuit against Ripple, the company behind XRP. That had clearly been an overhang on the token. And the SEC is likely to eventually approve a spot-XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) this year.
Investors looking ahead to what's next for XRP should pay attention to its network and its ability to participate in international payment transactions. It can process up to 1,500 transactions per second at minimal cost.
It's also part of a broadening ecosystem that includes Ripple and its more traditional financial clients, Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD, and the company's recent acquisitions of the prime broker Hidden Road, and more recently the stablecoin platform Rail.
Ripple Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse is confident that XRP can attract traditional international payments from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which lets financial institutions all over the world send payment instructions to one another. Garlinghouse has made comments on what he believes to be a high error rate at SWIFT, and he thinks there is a prime opportunity for XRP to gobble up 14% of its payment volume during the next five years.
Shiba Inu: Where is the token heading?
Shiba Inu has had an interesting run since its huge ascent that started in 2020. First launched as another meme token and basically a joke that's a play on Dogecoin, the token has begun to move in another direction. Sure, it's still a meme token with a powerful social following, but in 2023, the Shiba Inu team launched Shibarium.
Shiba Inu started as an ERC-20 token, meaning it was built to run on Ethereum's blockchain. But because Ethereum has had congestion issues, the Shiba Inu developers built Shibarium as a Layer-2 blockchain solution, which essentially performs Shiba Inu transactions off of Ethereum's network to speed up transactions and make them less expensive.
Recently, the Shibizens Twitter account, which is affiliated with Shiba Inu, posted on X that "Shibarium is more than a Layer 2 ... It is the infrastructure powering a decentralized, community-led future." The account also said that Shibarium can be used to support on-chain governance, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations, and real-world uses.
Certain transactions on Shibarium now also burn tokens, which could decrease Shiba Inu's huge supply over time.
Which cryptocurrency is more likely to be a millionaire maker?
Some may have already made $1 million if they invested in XRP or Shiba Inu in the early days, but if you're hoping to make that much by investing in them today, several things would need to happen.
For XRP, it's the ability to continue to be used for international payment transactions, perhaps fulfilling Garlinghouse's prediction of cutting into SWIFT's volume. Ripple can help the cause by continuing to build out its network, which should lead to added reach for XRP.
Shiba Inu will either have to recapture the hearts and minds of social media to go on a parabolic run, or prove that Shibarium has valuable real-world utility.
Ultimately, I wouldn't bet the farm on either of these tokens just yet. They are still too volatile. But if I had to pick one, I would pick XRP over Shiba Inu because of its strong technical network and potential to disrupt international payments, as well as its growing ecosystem with ties to Ripple.
