Is the Cryptocurrency XRP (Ripple) a Millionaire-Maker?

It's been a wild ride for cryptocurrency investors during the past few months -- and that's saying something. Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark, reaching more than $109,000 just 16 years after its creation. While the price has retreated to about $102,000 amid broader uncertainty, investors still appear optimistic that Bitcoin will continue to grow.

That optimism has spilled over into so-called altcoins looking to repeat the extreme successes of the original crypto. XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), in particular, has garnered a loyal following. The crypto token aimed at revolutionizing the banking industry has seen its price rise more than 300% during the past six months alone. Could XRP repeat the success of Bitcoin? Could it be a millionaire-maker?

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XRP basics

Let's step back for a moment and explore what XRP is and why it provides value. The crypto token is designed to act as a bridge between banks and other financial institutions. It helps facilitate international money transfers efficiently and lets banks settle transactions nearly instantaneously. Traditional methods can take days or even weeks, are often complex, expensive, and can involve third parties that complicate the issue further. XRP's core advantages over legacy systems are speed and minimal cost.

The fact that XRP provides real-world value and a record of use by the industry it is targeting makes it stand out in a market flooded by meme coins. Still, we have to try to quantify that value. Is it enough to justify the enormous $135 billion market capitalization XRP has already amassed?

Understanding XRP's value

It's difficult to come up with a direct comparison, but I think Visa is a good start. The company operates a vast global payment network that is not completely unlike XRP. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but I think it's still useful. How do the networks compare? Visa handles more than 640 million transactions per day. XRP's blockchain processes just 1 million per day.

Despite this disparity, Visa's market cap is only about five times more than XRP's. Does that seem proportional? It seems to me that either Visa is severely undervalued or XRP is severely overvalued. My money is on the latter.

Image source: Getty Images.

Maybe this isn't a fair comparison; let's try another way to think about it. The claim is often echoed that if XRP is widely adopted, it will capture a significant portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars banks pay in transaction fees each year. The flaw, as I see it, is that the only reason XRP is attractive to banks in the first place is because its cost is minuscule -- orders of magnitude less than traditional methods. Then it follows that even if it managed to handle transactions for the whole market, the fees it would collect would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars or low billions. That doesn't seem to justify the current market cap.

The question at hand

XRP may be faster and cheaper than traditional banking methods, but that doesn't guarantee adoption, and it certainly doesn't guarantee returns. Although there has been a surge in interest in XRP during the past few months, I'm skeptical of the token's long-term viability. It seems to me that XRP's price today already bakes in a ton of its future growth.

Although I fully admit that valuing crypto is difficult and often defies a lot of traditional thinking, I don't see XRP growing in the way it needs to make a good investment, let alone qualify it as a millionaire-maker, even by the most generous standards. I would also caution readers from getting too caught up in this sort of thinking and, instead, adopt a diversified approach, focusing on the long term.

Should you invest $1,000 in XRP right now?

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Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Visa, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.