David Schwartz, the longtime architect of the XRP Ledger and Ripple's Chief Technology Officer emeritus, said during a recent X Spaces discussion that XRP could one day overtake Bitcoin by market capitalization.
When asked directly whether such a scenario was possible, Schwartz answered affirmatively but emphasized an important condition: the shift would not result from Bitcoin declining, but rather from XRP growing faster than Bitcoin.
Growth in Expanding Market
Schwartz framed the scenario within a broader expansion of the digital-asset market, arguing that in a future where cryptocurrency as a whole becomes significantly larger, top assets could all rise in value rather than simply competing for a fixed share of capital.
He highlighted technical design as the foundation for potential growth. The XRP Ledger was built from inception as a faster, more scalable payments network than Bitcoin, with higher transaction speed and functionality that Bitcoin's base layer cannot support. These characteristics, Schwartz argued, could help XRPL attract users and capital seeking capabilities beyond simple store-of-value transfers.
Historical Precedent
XRP has closed significant market-cap gaps before. In late 2017 and early 2018, XRP briefly became the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, surpassing Ethereum and narrowing the distance to Bitcoin during that bull run.
Current Market Gap
The numerical gap between the two assets remains substantial today. Bitcoin traded near $77,165 on September 10 with a market cap of approximately $1.54 trillion, while XRP traded near $1.35 with a market cap of approximately $85 billion, placing Bitcoin roughly 18 times larger.
For XRP to match Bitcoin's current valuation, it would need to trade near $24.50, assuming Bitcoin's market cap remained steady and using XRP's circulating supply of approximately 62.7 billion tokens. Should Bitcoin continue growing, the target price for such a scenario would rise accordingly.
Schwartz did not present the outcome as inevitable or imminent. His comments reflect a conditional possibility rooted in relative technological strengths and overall market expansion rather than any expected decline of Bitcoin.
