Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz said during an X Spaces discussion on September 9, 2026, that he believes XRP could eventually surpass Bitcoin in market capitalization, though he was careful to specify the mechanism behind that outcome. Asked directly whether he genuinely believed the flip was possible, Schwartz answered in the affirmative while stressing that XRP would need to grow faster than Bitcoin rather than wait for Bitcoin's value to decline.
Angie asked "David in your humble opinion, do you believe XRP could actually flip Bitcoin?" pic.twitter.com/InhjVrM6Gv
— Vet (@Vet_X0) September 9, 2026
The distinction matters for how the prediction should be read. Schwartz's scenario depends on the broader digital asset market continuing to expand, with both Bitcoin and XRP rising in absolute terms while XRP captures a growing share of that expansion through the XRP Ledger's transaction speed, capacity, and payments-focused design.
What the current gap between Bitcoin and XRP actually looks like
The numbers illustrate how far that scenario sits from today's market. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin's market cap stands at approximately $1.55 trillion, while XRP's is near $84.8 billion, which makes Bitcoin roughly 18 times larger by total value. With approximately 62.7 billion XRP tokens in circulation, XRP would need to trade near $24.60 just to match Bitcoin's current market cap, assuming Bitcoin's valuation stayed flat. If Bitcoin continues rising, that required XRP price moves higher still. Bitcoin traded at $77,270 and XRP at $1.34 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin's total supply is fixed at 21 million coins, of which approximately 19.8 million have been mined as of 2026. XRP's supply structure differs fundamentally. Ripple pre-mined the entire 100 billion XRP supply at the network's 2012 launch, with a portion held in escrow accounts that release predetermined amounts monthly. That structural difference means XRP's circulating supply has grown over time as escrowed tokens unlock, while Bitcoin's supply growth follows a fixed, decelerating schedule tied to its halving events. Any comparison of the two assets' paths to market cap parity needs to account for the fact that XRP's fully diluted valuation, calculated against its 100 billion total supply rather than the 62.7 billion currently circulating, would require an even larger price move to reach equivalent total value.
The 2018 precedent and why today's gap is wider
XRP has approached a version of this milestone before. In early 2018, XRP briefly became the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, as CNBC reported at the time. Even at that peak, XRP's market value reached only around 40% of Bitcoin's cap. Today, that ratio stands at roughly 5.6%, meaning the relative distance between the two assets has widened substantially since XRP's closest historical approach.
The 2018 episode occurred during a period of extraordinary retail speculation across the entire crypto market, sometimes called the ICO boom, when total market capitalization across all cryptocurrencies grew from roughly $17 billion at the start of 2017 to nearly $830 billion by January 2018. XRP's rise during that period was disproportionately driven by retail exchange listings in South Korea and Japan rather than the institutional and payments-focused adoption Schwartz's current argument rests on. The current cycle's dynamics differ meaningfully, with spot ETF flows and institutional custody arrangements playing a larger role in both assets' price discovery than they did in 2017 and 2018.
What would actually need to happen for the flip to occur
Schwartz's framing treats the flip as a long-term possibility contingent on specific conditions rather than a near-term forecast. Stronger institutional demand, wider network usage of the XRP Ledger, and sustained expansion of the overall digital asset market would all need to materialize simultaneously.
XRP has seen concrete institutional developments that support at least part of this thesis. Spot XRP ETFs launched in the US in late 2025 following the SEC's dismissal of its lawsuit against Ripple, and cumulative net inflows into those products reached approximately $1.57 billion, according to SoSoValue data. Ripple has also pursued payments-focused partnerships through its On-Demand Liquidity product, which uses XRP as a bridge currency for cross-border settlement. Whether that adoption scales to a level that closes an 18-times valuation gap with Bitcoin is a separate question from whether the adoption itself is real and growing.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, has continued attracting its own institutional capital through spot ETFs that have accumulated over $54 billion in cumulative net inflows since their January 2024 launch, alongside corporate treasury adoption from companies including Strategy, which held 845,050 BTC as of late August 2026. Both assets are drawing institutional interest concurrently, which is precisely the dynamic Schwartz's scenario requires: not Bitcoin declining, but XRP growing at a faster relative rate within a market where both are expanding.
Roman Zaika
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