TL: DR
A new class of Ripple maximalists seems to be emerging in the crypto space, and this time, they’re carrying bottomless pockets.
Yoshitaka Kitao, the CEO of SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial institution generating over $200 billion in revenue, is very bullish on XRP and wants to help it take over Bitcoin in market cap.
Kitao has been quoted as saying he believes that the “Because the fundamental value (of Bitcoin) is zero, it falls by 80% from the peak. This is rare in the stock market and others. It has been said from the long ago that the rule of the rice exchange rate, even if it fells, it is said that it will almost stop at “half price eight odd discounts,” but it continued to fall without stopping. After all, it is because there is no fundamental value.
There is basically no value for Bitcoin. The fact that Bi coins are going to be used more and more in practical use is not easy when it comes to that price. So I think that ‘XRP’ in the crypto world is probably the number one crypto asset.”
He also sees that many financial service companies are being introduced to XRapid, and is encouraged by the more than 200 companies so far signed up to RippleNet.
One of the more exciting points Kitao made is that he thinks Bitcoin is “still searching for a use case, whereas XRP already has utility as a tool for making faster and cheaper cross border payments.”
This, of course, is merely incorrect. The reality is that Bitcoin’s use case is more dynamic than XRP’s, which on the surface can make it seem as though it has no utility.
BTC cannot only be used for cross-border payments, but also as a medium of exchange between buyers and sellers, as well as a store of value.
XRP’s utility is clearly defined because it is owned and operated by a centralized entity that dictates what the coin’s utility should be. Bitcoin is decentralized and not owned by anyone. Therefore, anyone can define what its utility should be based on what they deem it most valuable to use for: a store of value, a medium of exchange, speculative asset, settling cross board payments, etc.
Despite the lack of a concrete use case for Bitcoin can sound like a negative one, it is a virtue, as it proves that Bitcoin is genuinely a decentralized cryptocurrency, and therefore can be trusted to provide the privacy and security benefits that only a cryptocurrency built on a decentralized network is a capable way of offering.
XRP may have cross board payments, but still lacks cross border appeal: SBI Holdings is an investment firm in both Ripple and R3, which is a distributed ledger technology company using XRP to settle transactions between crypto and traditional assets. Hence it’s not a surprise that their CEO is bullish on XRP’s price.
It will be interesting to see whether this large financial institution can boost the value of XRP past that of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s brand awareness is significantly higher than XRP’s. This in large part is due to Ripple being centralized. If Ripple hopes to ever get to the scale of Bitcoin, they may need to offer something that has a universal appeal beyond a solution for mega-rich financial institutions to cut down on processing costs. Because even if XRP’s solution helps everyday people get better and cheaper banking services, it still pales in comparison to Bitcoins value proposition; which is to allow ordinary people to essentially become their banks, cutting out all middlemen (including XRP) completely.
