XRP Vs. Cardano (ADA), Which Is The Better Investment In 2023?

Cardano (ADA) and XRP are popular entry-level investments in the crypto market due to their low prices below $1. But what are the prospects for both altcoins in 2023? We’ll take a look at the fundamentals as well as the technical analysis perspective.

The success of the XRP price this year could largely depend on the outcome of the court case between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If Ripple manages to leave the courtroom as the winner, the price could skyrocket.

According to current projections, including from Ripple’s legal counsel Stuart Alderoty, the trial could likely end in the second quarter of 2023. A Ripple victory could trigger a reverse effect on the XRP price as of December 2020.

The week the SEC filed its lawsuit, the XRP price fell a whopping -72% in seven days. The price crashed from $0.60 to $0.17. Compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, XRP still shows a massive undervaluation since the event.

While BTC and ETH are 69% and 68% down from their all-time highs, respectively, the current XRP price is 88% below its all-time high of $3.40. Thus, XRP bulls will be eager to make up for this shortfall.

A Ripple victory could reactivate old and new partnerships. During the Ripple Swell conference in November, CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed that U.S. banks and companies are in the pipeline as partners once the court case is out of the way, as Bitcoinist reported.

Garlinghouse said, among other things: “Bank of America is a huge partner of Ripple,” and went on to explain that “Bank of America stands to gain really big when the settlement happens because they are gonna have a huge competitive advantage over their competitors by using ODL and the marketplace.”

Also, Ripple’s partnership with MoneyGram, which was stalled by the SEC’s lawsuit, could get a new chance. Ripple had already bought shares in MoneyGram amounting to about 10% before the lawsuit.

Due to the SEC lawsuit, both partners amicably ended the partnership and agreed to leave all options open for a new collaboration at a “later” date. Also bullish could be the relisting of XRP on U.S. exchanges like Coinbase, where trading was suspended because of the SEC.

At the same time, a Ripple loss against the SEC could nullify the positive catalysts for the XRP price, and cause a massive dump.

A look at the 1-week chart of XRP shows that the price is currently stuck below the resistance zone at $0.40. Once broken, XRP bulls could target the breakout above $0.60 before the magical $1 price will be the main goal.

Should XRP crush this price as well, the $2 mark would be the next big target, which proved to be an unbreakable resistance in April 2021.

The Cardano (ADA) price is also 89% below its all-time high of $3.09, which was reached in September 2021. This year, there are major updates in store for the Cardano ecosystem that could impact the ADA price.

The community is currently eagerly awaiting the launch of the layer-2 scaling solution Hydra, which is expected to massively increase transaction throughput and make Cardano one of the fastest blockchains on the market with one million transactions per second (TPS).

In addition, Cardano will see the launch of the stablecoin Djed. This could also be significant for the Cardano DeFi ecosystem.

In general, the size of Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem still lags far behind that of Ethereum and other major blockchains. Therefore, the growth of this sector will likely be one of the most important factors for the ADA price.

Another important project for 2023 is Cardano’s own privacy sidechain called “Midnight.” The developers have already been working on this project in secret for several months. It is supposed to be a sidechain of Cardano that will have its own token called “DUST” and anonymously executable smart contracts.

The 1-week chart of Cardano (ADA) shows that the price has managed to break out of the downtrend that has been persisting since April, with a retest currently underway. Should ADA bounce up from this descending trendline, the $0.69 level would be the next major hurdle.

Subsequently, Cardano (ADA) might be able to tackle the psychologically important $1.00 level.

XRP and Cardano (ADA) show similar price behavior over the last two years and have great upside potential due to their strong fundamentals. However, given the unpredictable outcome of the court battle between the SEC and Ripple, XRP has a slightly higher investment risk.

Featured image from Gam-Ol / Pixabay, Chart from TradingView.com