• Bitcoin bull and expert, Mike Novogratz, expressed his concerns at the LINC 2020 conference that Ripple’s XRP could continue to underperform in 2020.
• Ripple CEO Garlinghouse refuted the statement, pointing to XRP’s strong performance in 2020.

Although the price of Ripple’s XRP in 2020 has so far outperformed Bitcoin (BTC), Mike Novogratz said that XRP’s performance this year is expected to be similar to 2019. While the price of XRP has fallen from around USD 0.35 to USD 0.19, a drop of 45%, BTC rose last year from USD 3,780 to USD 7,170 (+89%).

Novogratz spoke before a group of financial advisors during the LINC 2020 conference and dropped a line to Ripple that probably caused displeasure to those responsible at Ripple. During a stage discussion with financial guru Ric Edelman, Novogratz said that the XRP price trend in 2020 is likely to be “underperform immensely”, similar to 2019. He cited Ripple’s monthly XRP sales as the reason:

It [XRP] did underperform immensely last year. I think it will underperform immensely again this year and it’s just because of the supply.

Ripple the company owns 60 billion of the coins, of the XRP. That’s a lot of it. When I’m buying a stock, if I know [someone’s] selling $10 billion-worth of it at some price, it makes me less excited to buy the stock.

With this Novogratz is knocking into a notch that the people in charge at Ripple have heard only too often in the past few months. Under the motto “dumping XRP“, numerous experts and XRP supporters accuse Ripple of negatively influencing the price of XRP. Through the monthly release of one billion XRP from an escrow account and the sales made to exchanges and other institutions, according to the opinion, the XRP price is negatively influenced permanently.

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, of course did not hesitate to react to the renewed accusation. Garlinghouse emphasized in a tweet that XRP has a higher price gain than Bitcoin in 2020:

Ahem… IS THIS THING ON… can I get a fact check on aisle CoinDesk? XRP has outperformed BTC and the broader crypto market in 2020. XRP is up 44% (19.1 to 27.5) vs BTC’s 33% (7,100 to 9,500) so far this year.

Garlinghouse jokingly added that Novogratz also predicted that Tom Hanks would win an Oscar for Mr. Rogers, saying that this may be the only prediction that will come true.

Also..this is the same guy that said bitcoin will go to 20K in 2019 ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ #notNostradamus He did predict Tom Hanks would win an Oscar for Mr. Rogers – maybe this is the prediction he’ll get right? Personally voting for Brad Pitt though!

Novogratz: XRP and Ethereum are still in “proving phase”

Despite the exchange of words between Novogratz and Garlinghouse, it should not be forgotten that Galaxy Digital is one of the largest investors in Ripple Labs, as Novogratz also explained in a number of other tweets. Accordingly, he wants Ripple Labs to be successful.

In response to Garlinghouse’s tweet, Novogratz went on to say that he is surprised by the current performance of the altcoin market. As he explains, it is mainly Bitcoin (BTC) that is attracting the interest of large clients:

That said, I see more and more large accounts getting educated and set up to be accumulators of $BTC snd believe on a risk adjusted basis it’s the best place to bet on crypto.[…] $BTC has found a place as a weapon in macro portfolios as digital gold – a hard asset. All other crypto’s are venture bets and will only have lasting value if they become a product that is useful. $eth might be the trust level people build on. If it does, it’s a great bet.

According to Novogratz, both XRP and Ethereum (ETH) are in a “proving phase”. They will be successful if they build a “real and scalable use case”. Then there will be more buyers than sellers and the price will rise, Novogratz said.

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