Donald Trump campaigned on a pro-crypto agenda in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election last November. The total value of all coins and tokens in circulation has climbed steadily following his victory, and recently hit a new record high of $4.2 trillion.
Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) accounts for $2.3 trillion of that value on its own, but XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) — while much smaller — has delivered a much bigger gain of 500% since November.
Both cryptocurrencies have their merits, but which one might be the better buy for the remainder of this year (and beyond)?
The case for XRP (Ripple)
Ripple is the company behind the innovative Ripple Payments network, which uses blockchain technology to clear and settle cross-border transactions instantly. It let banks bypass intermediaries and deal with one another directly, which means transfers that used to take days can now be completed in seconds.
Ripple created XRP to standardize transactions within Ripple Payments. Global banks can send XRP tokens to one another instead of sending their domestic currencies, which cuts out expensive foreign exchange fees. A transfer using XRP costs just 0.00001 tokens, which is a fraction of one U.S. cent.
XRP isn’t a decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, because it has to be issued by Ripple. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took issue with this arrangement, suing the company in 2020 for alleged breaches of financial securities laws. The agency argued that XRP should be treated the same as any other security which is issued by a company, like a stock or a bond. This threatened to restrict Ripple’s business by placing it under a tight regulatory framework.
The case was partially resolved in August 2024, when a judge ruled that XRP might only be a security in specific circumstances. But the SEC appealed the decision, which could have tied the parties up in court for several more years. However, shortly after his election win last November, Trump nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to run the SEC, which changed everything.
The agency has since withdrawn from several of its active legal cases against crypto companies, and it dropped its appeal against Ripple on Aug. 7, which officially ended the messy five-year legal brawl.
