Stellar Lumens, the concept of Ripple’s co-founder, Jed McCaleb has been experiencing solid gains in recent weeks, particularly against Ripple XRP. However, in recent days, the price of Stellar Lumens XLM has remained somewhat flat, while XRP experienced double-digit growth overnight. Ripple XRP and Stellar XLM are continuing to lock horns, with their rivalry starting out some time ago, is it a good time to buy Ripple?
Stellar’s cross-border payments platform stands on the toes of Ripple’s similar infrastructure, with the former attempting to become the future of mobile banking. XLM is said to be able to facilitate low-cost payments between different currencies within five seconds and is said to be more scalable than its elder sibling, Ripple.
Ripple still stands as the biggest platform
At the time of writing, Ripple remains the largest platform of the two, not only in its user adoption but in its market capitalisation, which stands at more than $10 billion. Although Stellar has recently signed a significant deal with IBM to provide technology for a global payments network, Ripple’s strong presence within India’s burgeoning cryptocurrency market has started to reap dividends. Ripple also boasts hundreds of deals with high street banks and payment providers worldwide, so will Ripple win the battle and the war against Stellar? What is the short and long-term outlook for the price of Ripple XRP?
In the short term, Ripple appears to be winning the battle against Stellar, with the former experiencing a double-digit spike this week. The popularity and reputation of Ripple are the main reasons why the cryptocurrency stands a good chance of building on these recent short-term gains. There appears to be significant confidence within the Ripple community at present. xRapid could be set to go live within the next couple of months, which could certainly influence another price increase.
Once xRapid is good to go, it will bring the Ripple network to life, joining the dots and allowing Ripple to service the 120+ banks and financial institutions that have signed up to XRP. xRapid will eventually utilise the XRP cryptocurrency to settle cross-border payments. Ripple’s Sagar Sarbhai confirmed to CNBC that “in the next one month or so” Ripple will be in a position to “launch the product live in production”.
Decentralised payment systems still in their infancy
As for Ripple’s long-term prospects, it’s fair to say that decentralised, digital payment systems of 2018 are at the same stage that email was back in the 1980s. Programmers and developers built email systems that worked for their specific customers, but none of the systems were built to interact and communicate with one another. Ripple’s purpose is to connect the plethora of global payment systems together digitally.
Is the advent of xRapid and the increased adoption of Ripple by banking institutions likely to influence long-term growth in XRP towards its all-time high? Quite possibly. Ripple recently partnered with LianLian International, one of China’s well-established money service firms, with 150 million-plus active users. If Ripple enters the Chinese market, it could help LianLian International facilitate tens of thousands of global payments via its e-commerce market, providing tracking and cross-border transactions from the US and Europe to China.