It is almost impossible to predict the crypto market at this point. We are in such a period of flux with some cryptos jumping 1000% over night. Each morning I get out of bed, check coinmarketcap and kick myself for not catching the latest wave but then I realize that I cannot see into the future and I give myself a break. That is why this is a shaky prediction but I base it on the following facts:
Businesses and Banks love Ripple - Ripple's biggest weakness among crypto's early adopters maybe its biggest strength. Ripple is more centralized than most cryptos which offers an extra level of security for financial institutions. We are in the dawn of a major shirt to our financial markets and Ripple maybe the bridge that makes this shift acceptable for the banks and it may save them millions in transactions fees.
Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash war - I believe that the Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash struggle is going to end up harming both of these currencies. I don't believe that Bitcoin Cash brings enough to the table to overtake Bitcoin but it does a good job of dividing the community and allowing another competitors like Ethereum or Ripple to move in.
Adaption on Coinbase - Rumors strongly suggest that this will happen sooner than later in 2018. It maybe delayed a bit due to the Bitcoin Cash debacles but I imagine that Coinbase recognizes the advantages of adopting a coin that banks and big businesses will get on board with. Ripple's addition to Coinbase should go much better than BTH's adoption due to the fact that there isn't a bunch of XRP sitting around waiting to be dumped.
Cheap, fast, stable transactions - This coin has everything that Bitcoin doesn't have...it is fast, at a 4 second transactions, almost 50 times faster than Ethereum. It is cheap, and most importantly it is stable.
As I said at the beginning of this post it is impossible to guess on what will end up gaining crypto dominance but I can see this coin (because of it acceptability to banks) being dominate for the next several years while our financial institutions fully adopt blockchain technology.
