Ripple XRP is 35% more expensive than Bitcoins?

[sebicas]

I been following the Ripple Market, and I wanted to get your opinion, seams is getting very crazy lately.

At this time:

- XRP is been trading at BitStamp Marketplace on Ripple for about 55 XRP per USD ( $0.0185 per XRP )
- BTC is been trading at MtGox for about $122 per BTC

Given the amount of currency issues, the market cap for both currencies are:

- Ripple  : 100,000,000,000 * $0.0185 = $1,850,000,000
- Bitcoin :         11,168,000 * $122 =  $1,362,496,000

But what is more interesting is that if Ripple would have only 11,168,000 instead of 100 Billions, the price per unit will be: $165.65.- that is 35% more than Bitcoin.

The only I could think is the psychological about costing just pennies... any other logical explanation for this?

[cryptogoldstandard]

I have been following the Ripple market and frankly I didn't expect it to hit .01 for quite some time, but that is now history and I suspect that Opencoin will not flood the market with XRP because they are likely making some money selling them to Bitstamp who resells them for a profit. Just speculation.

One thing to keep in mind with the Ripple is how much is actually circulating and how much will be circulating and at what point in time will the remaining Ripple circulate. From what I have read, about 1.2B have been distributed and are in "circulation" right now. I use that term circulate loosely because almost all activity is trading. It's hard enough to spend Bitcoins let alone Ripple XRP that even the Bitcoin savy may not know about yet. 20B are unlikely to enter circulation for quite some time (the founders share). Another 30B might take even longer to enter circulation (Opencoin's funding per their stated business model). 50B is being given away, however we have no timeline on when they will be distributed nor precisely who will get how much. Developers will probably get the Lion's share for developing apps and such, but again that is speculation.

Bottom line: We have very few hard facts, but assuming Opencoin acts in a self interested manner (as for profit companies do) the supply will be introduced gradually so the value stays relatively stable and giveaway's will match the growth of the Ripple network.

[Pzi4nk]

One of the differneces between Ripple and Bitcoin is Ripple was never designed to be a currency, it's designed to facilitate movement between currencies.

[keatonatron]

Also, although 100,000,000,000 XRP exists, not even close to half of that has been issued yet.

Even a good chunk of the BTC is in lost wallets or being ignored, which means your calculations aren't accurate.

If there are only 1,000,000 XRP actually in circulation, and people are still only willing to pay 0.0185 for them, then the demand isn't nearly as high as for bitcoin.

[colour]

One of the differneces between Ripple and Bitcoin is Ripple was never designed to be a currency, it's designed to facilitate movement between currencies.

The supporters of Opencoin's Ripple keep saying that, but I do not believe this is true. Opencoin states that they wanted to use the XRP they gave themselves to serve as their own payment for developing their version of Ripple.  This would not make any sense if Opencoin did not expect XRP to actually become worth enough to serve as a currency. Also, who cares what they were designed for, when reality shows that they obviously are being used as currency.

I keep repeating myself, but XRP seems to me like the potentially biggest premine scam ever pulled off: 100% of the XRP for themselves, and if they have a good day, they may stick to their promise of distributing them in a fair manner. Personally, I am not willing to give a for-profit company enough trust to expect this to really happen.