The world’s highest IQ holder has said XRP could surpass Ethereum in market value in 2026 adding to a growing debate over the future of the two major cryptocurrencies.
YoungHoon Kim, who claims an IQ score of 276, said in a social media post that XRP could overtake Ethereum’s market capitalization by 2026. He added that his comment was a personal view and not financial advice.
At present, Ethereum remains the second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. ETH was trading around $2,927 on Tuesday, up 0.77% over the past 24 hours, with a market value of about $353 billion. XRP was trading near $1.91, up 1.07%, giving it a market capitalisation of roughly $116 billion, according to market data.
Kim’s remarks are not the first prediction that XRP could challenge Ethereum’s position.
Earlier this year, Austin King, a Harvard-educated computer engineer and co-founder of the Omni Foundation, made similar comments in an interview on the Good Morning Crypto podcast. King said Ethereum is facing structural problems that could limit its long-term growth.
He argued that Ethereum has shifted away from its original vision of being a deflationary network. According to King, increased activity on Layer 2 networks has made Ethereum inflationary, meaning the total supply of ETH is now rising instead of falling.
King also raised concerns about centralisation, saying many Layer 2 solutions are run by single operators, which he believes weakens Ethereum’s decentralised nature. He added that Ethereum’s slow progress has contributed to investor pessimism, reflected in its weaker price performance compared with Bitcoin.
By contrast, King said XRP stands out due to its fixed supply of 100 billion tokens and its use cases in cross-border payments and asset tokenisation. While Ripple releases about 200 million XRP into circulation each month, King said the asset remains more stable than Ethereum.
For XRP to overtake Ethereum’s market value, its price would need to rise sharply. King estimated that XRP reaching around $6 could be enough to surpass Ethereum’s current market capitalization, assuming ETH remains near present levels.
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