AS the price of bitcoin suffers a lengthy New Year hangover one of the surprising trends for 2018 so far has been the arrival of a noticeable chasing pack of crypto offerings.
Ripple has arrived in 2018 by grabbing headlines, mostly down to optimism from mainstream banks that - unlike bitcoin, with its links to the Dark Web and terrorism - offers blockchain technology without the accompanying bad press.
Ripple or XRP has a market capitalisation of $112billion, having overtaken Ethereum earlier this year. It now sits second only to bitcoin’s market capitalisation of $225billion and has gained more than 45,700 percent over the last 12 months.
Express.co.uk spoke to asset manager Levi Meade, Lead Investment Analyst at Columbus Capital about the many differences in the “protocols” of the new offerings and why this is important in understanding their move towards mainstream adoption.
Mr Meade says that, although Bitcoin cash, Ethereum and Ripple are all referred to as cryptocurrencies, they are very difference animals and not necessarily in direct competition with one another.
Bitcoin Cash, Mr Meade says, was created on the basis of becoming a global currency, with Bitcoin only more recently seeming to be a potential safe haven asset or store of wealth. In terms of payment, both bitcoin and bitcoin cash have been built to allow the simple A to B transfer of value as the application.
Ethereum, on the other hand is referred to as a smart contract platform.
Mr Meade adds: “This was built with the purpose of extending the programmability of money, which simply means that much more complicated transactions than simple A to B transfers can take place when utilising the capabilities of the Ethereum blockchain.”
The asset manager presents an example, when he said: “Perhaps you would like to do a transaction with another person or company that has certain criteria to be met which affects the timing and amount of a payment or even perhaps stream of payments.
“With this is mind, rather than aiming to become a world currency, Ethereum has the potential to be a fundamental piece of architecture behind the next generation of the Web and smart devices, handling all aspects of value transfer natively to these systems.”
Finally, the Ripple blockchain again differs to an even greater extent to bitcoin than Ethereum.
The asset manager says that while the name of the game for bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum is “disruption” of the financial world. He said: “Ripple is a blockchain solution that can best be described as a massive infrastructure upgrade to the world of finance bringing value transfer into the digital age.
“The Ripple blockchain seeks to replace existing payment rails that connect Banks, Payment providers, Corporates and exchanges in order to provide quite dramatic savings in costs and time.”
But which of these offering is most likely to challenge bitcoin’s hegemony as the number one cryptocurrency?
None of them, according to Mr Meade.
He added: “It is certainly not the case that Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum or Ripple are directly chasing bitcoin.
“It is quite possible that amongst a number of different scenarios, all of these assets and blockchains can coexist. However, it is also the case that if anyone of these experiences massive wide scale global adoption that an ecosystem develops around it that leaves no room for a competing blockchain to fulfil its own individual use case at scale.
“The situation is not black and white - winner takes all.
“It is much more accurate to think of the situation like the Big Bang; right now developers and technologists are experimenting with this technology to see how it can be applied with other technologies and how it can be used and applied to form the foundation of a next-generation Web and digitally native financial architecture.”
Although the asset manager won’t pick a winner Jimmy Nguyen, Chief Executive Officer of leading blockchain specialist, nChain, told Express.co.uk that Bitcoin Cash - with a commitment to bigger blocks, faster speed, and lower transaction fees, is a new piece of technology that can rival the VISA and Mastercard global payment systems and create enterprise-level payment and technology systems.
He added: “While legacy Bitcoin has attracted much attention in late 2017, Bitcoin Cash has been quietly gaining traction.
“Bitcoin Cash is now set to take off further in the next 12 months as awareness of the benefits of a truly scalable cryptocurrency become clearer in the eyes of business leaders.”