Since being founded in 2012, Ripple has quickly become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world. With a total market cap of over $19.5 billion, it’s no surprise that many investors are looking for Ripple alternatives. So, we asked finance experts to share their thoughts to help you make the right investment decision. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at 10 different Ripple competitors that you should keep an eye on in 2023.
Some of these cryptocurrencies have been around for longer than Ripple, while others are just starting to make a name for themselves. Regardless, all of these currencies have the potential to overtake Ripple as the top dog in the cryptocurrency world. So without further ado, let’s take a look at 10 Ripple competitors (recommended by investors and experts).
10 Ripple (XRP) Competitors You Should Watch Out for in 2023:
1. Stellar (XLM)
Ripple and the Stellar Network are frequently contrasted. There are two explanations for this. First of all, Jed McCaleb, who was instrumental in the conception and introduction of Ripple, is the brain behind Stellar. Following a contentious turn of events, McCaleb quit Ripple to co-found Stellar with Joyce Kim. (The cryptocurrency monitoring Twitter account Whale Warning stated in early February that McCaleb also had XRP 4.7 billion to sell, which equates to about 5% of the total supply, after selling off more than one billion XRP from 2014 and 2019.)
Second, to allow quick, easy, and affordable cross-border payments, both Ripple and Stellar use blockchain technology. The biggest distinction between their strategies is that whereas Stellar has been emphasizing individuals as its primary user base, Ripple has been concentrating on banks and other financial institutions. It’s vital to remember that Stellar began as a Ripple blockchain hard fork. As a result, many of the technical requirements are comparable. Although Stellar has chosen to concentrate mainly on payments among individuals, this platform still contains the technical foundations required to link banks, financial firms, and companies.
Stellar facilitates affordable cross-border payments with its digital asset, Lumens (XLM), and is particularly geared toward users from underdeveloped nations. The average processing time for transactions transmitted over its Stellar network is under five seconds, and the cost is 1/600,000,000th of a cent per transaction. Finally, the platform also offers a decentralized exchange in which its token can be used to conduct exchanges, keeping with Stellar’s tenet of fostering decentralization and supporting the digital financial sovereignty of an individual.
– Jonathan Merry, Director at Bankless Times
Related: What Is the Best Crypto to Buy Right Now and Why?
2. Ethereum (ETH)
In my opinion, Ripple’s top cryptocurrency competitor is Ethereum (ETH). Ripple and Ethereum are both members of the group of second-generation cryptocurrencies, meaning that they were launched after Bitcoin.
Ripple was designed with the goal of becoming a global payment system, while Ethereum focuses on hosting decentralized applications. Ripple has a faster transaction speed and uses less energy than Ethereum.
Ripple also has a more centralized governance structure than Ethereum, which is seen as a positive by some and a negative by others. Ultimately, Ripple and Ethereum are both strong contenders in the cryptocurrency world, and it remains to be seen which one will come out on top.
– Raj Vardhman, Co-Founder at WP-Stack
3. NANO (XNO)
NANO is a great alternative to Ripple. Although, in terms of market capitalization, Ripple (XRP) is way above NANO. But when it comes to transaction fees and transaction fees, NANO clearly stands out.
First, NANO is the fastest decentralized currency in existence. It has a median transaction time of less than one second.
Plus, NANO has zero transaction fees. To send NANO tokens, you don’t have to pay anything compared to Ripple’s 0.00001 XRP fee.
NANO is also environmentally friendly as the crypto does not rely on mining or printing. Instead, it stands out to be a sustainable solution to money. You can perform 6 million NANO transactions at the energy consumed by a single Bitcoin transaction.
The cryptocurrency was launched in 2015 with the RaiBlocks name, but in 2018 it renamed itself to NANO. The crypto network uses a block-lattice data structure in which every account has its own blockchain for storing transactions.
– Sudhir Khatwani, Founder at The Money Mongers
See Also: 10 Coinbase Alternatives & Competitors
4. Binance Coin
Binance Coin is, without a doubt, the biggest competitor for Ripple. It has one of the largest market capitalizations in the cryptocurrency industry. It comes with a faster transaction speed and cheaper fees. Binance gives its users a chance to make 100 transactions which no other competitor offers. And the fee is just a flat 0.1% per trade.
Also, some of the most popular apps like PancakeSwap, Gameta, and Alien Worlds function on Binance Smart Chain. It also has a personalized academy that has tutorials that help beginners gain knowledge about the Binance coin exchange.
Binance is attached to the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchange, where it is used as a discount token. And the discount is 25%. With all this in mind, BNB has a bright future ahead. The network effect of its growing ecosystem will further enhance the value of BNB, giving major competition to others.
– Fraser Matthews, President at Netcoins
5. Digital Fiat Currency
CBDC, or central bank digital currency, is a digital token issued by governments through their central banking institutions. Digital currencies (aka digital fiat) are only a reflection of a country’s official fiat currency. Launching a digital version of a fiat currency expands their power while staying current with technology developments, as fiat currencies are crucial tools for defining and implementing fiscal policies.
The People’s Bank of China’s digital yuan (e-CNY) is expected to launch this year, making it one of the most prominent CBDCs. It’s expected that, because of the sheer magnitude of the Chinese market, its introduction would cause a dramatic shakeup in both the conventional banking system and the digital asset industry.
Furthermore, CBDCs may represent a serious threat to Ripple since they would have both political and legal backing. Given that CBDCs offer many of the same capabilities as Ripple’s technology, the latter may become unnecessary if they are employed as blockchain-powered interbank payment networks.
– Matt Weidle, Business Development Manager at Buyer’s Guide
Also Read: Why Crypto Market Is So Down? 8 Major Reasons
6. OmiseGO
OmiseGO is creating a decentralized exchange network that is independent of currencies and can communicate with blockchains. The network is intended to enable real-time, peer-to-peer financial transactions for anyone. OmiseGO provides a free e-wallet software kit that enables digital wallet companies to link to the open OMG network and enable transactions between their users’ digital assets.
In order to enable “asset agnostic” exchange processes on a real-time basis on an Ethereum-based blockchain, a completely decentralized peer-to-peer framework is being built. Omise will allow users and developers access to its current, well-established base of financial services. This could manage payments, transfers, and even rewards points for cross-wallet transactions.
National borders are the best place to look for a cryptocurrency that resembles Ripple. OmiseGO is targeted at the Southeast Asian market, but anyone can use its network to carry out real-time, peer-to-peer financial transactions, such as payments and remittances, B2B commerce, and supply-chain finance.
– Jenna Adams, Founder at Avenue Perth
7. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin (BTC) is the original cryptocurrency, and it is where it all began. It is the most well-known and largest digital currency in terms of market capitalization. Ripple is frequently regarded as Bitcoin’s direct competitor. This digital currency is built on blockchain technology, which means that data is stored in a distributed ledger and distributed across multiple nodes.
It means that information cannot be erased or forged once it is registered in the chain of blocks. The public ledger’s primary function is to verify transactions and keep records. Bitcoin is supported by a dedicated team of developers. No third party, including governments or banks, governs this decentralized system.
– Agnes Zabawa, Marketing Manager at Insurance Navy
Related: 15 Ethereum Alternatives & Competitors
8. Litecoin
Litecoin is without a doubt one of the best alternatives to XRP. Unlike XRP which primarily focuses on banks and other financial institutions, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer currency that is targeted at individuals and can be used to send payments to anyone anywhere in the world with almost zero fees.
On the similarities between XRP and Litecoin (LTC), both cryptocurrencies are decentralized, open source, deflationary, and offer low-cost transactions, and ultra-fast transaction speeds.
One of the significant differences between both is that XRP is primarily focused on instant cross-border payments (via the XRP Ledger) and CBDCs (using the private version of the XRP Ledger). Litecoin on the other hand is geared toward both domestic and international peer-to-peer payments primarily between individuals.
The native Litecoin blockchain is also more decentralized with more validators (virtually anyone can run a node) while the XRP ledger currently has only around 150 validators. When compared to XRP, Litecoin is a more widely accepted cryptocurrency with 2000+ known merchants accepting LTC as a means of payment.
Since Litecoin is a pure currency just like Bitcoin, the Litecoin blockchain lacks additional features, unlike the XRP ledger, which supports various payment applications in addition to processing XRP transactions.
– Jay Wilkins, Founder at IsItCrypto
9. IOTA
Both Ripple (XRP) and IOTA were built with specific goals in mind. IOTA is intended for IoT and may eventually become a standard crypto asset for the internet of things and Web 3, whereas Ripple streamlines settlement across all financial institutions by allowing for speedier transactions and reduced fees.
IOTA has a number of benefits over Ripple. It is not reliant on mining, it is self-sustainable and scalable. IOTA does not charge any crypto transaction fees, and each transaction can be completed without using any significant computational resources, making IOTA one of the most environmentally friendly cryptocurrencies.
IOTA provides a more solid technological framework with no restriction on the number of users who may utilize the Tangle at the same time, as IOTA’s distributed ledger. Tangle is based on a data structure known as the DAG (Decentralized Acyclic Graph). Unlike the DAG architecture of many other cryptocurrencies, IOTA’s DAG enables all the transactions to be executed simultaneously, as Tangle’s data structure is non-sequential. This makes IOTA massively scalable.
Ripple is regulated by the banking sector, while IOTA’s DAG is not under the control of any external authority such as a bank or any financial institution. IOTA is also more resistant to decryption than Ripple since it is compatible with emerging quantum computing.
– Evgen Verzun, Founder at Kaizen Finance
10. SWIFT
Ripple is not a conventional cryptocurrency. One of the core pillars of cryptocurrency is decentralization. Ripple, however, goes against that mantra; it is centralized, with the XRP supply controlled by Ripple Labs.
It follows from this unconventional structure that Ripple’s most significant competitor is not really a cryptocurrency. In fact, its top rival is SWIFT, the communications system used by banks and financial institutions for money transfers.
This is a direct result of the area in which Ripple aims to disrupt: the highly inefficient inter-bank transfer network. Ripple claims it can settle transactions in 3-5 seconds at a cost of $0.0002.
This is a far cry from the average SWIFT transfer which can take days to complete and carry significantly higher cost, due to so many different banking checkpoints required (which is only exacerbated with international transfers involving currency conversions).
The main difference between the two – and why the speeds and costs are so different – is that Ripple completes the transactions on the blockchain using its native token (XRP). This means there is an exchange of value here, in contrast to SWIFT which is merely an exchange of information.
Whether Ripple can succeed, however, is another matter entirely. SWIFT may be inefficient, but it does work – and has been around for a long time, founded in 1973, as opposed to Ripple which only launched in 2012.
– Dan Ashmore, Financial Analyst at CoinJournal
See Also: Top 10 Bitcoin Alternatives
Conclusion
According to cryptocurrency experts, these are the top 10 Ripple competitors that could potentially provide a better solution for international payments in 2023. All of these companies have been backed by major financial institutions and have shown significant growth potential.
As the world becomes more digitized, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve and choose the right platform for your needs. With so many options available, be sure to do your own research to decide which one is best for you.
