Could an Altcoin Flip Bitcoin in the Near Future? AllinCrypto November 24, 2025
Known as digital gold, Bitcoin has led to ETF issuances and digital asset inflows from institutional investors as a store of value, maintaining its position as a top cryptocurrency.
As blockchain technology continues to mature, there’s a reason to believe that altcoins like Ripple’s XRP, Hedera, or Ethereum could one day overtake Bitcoin in market capitalization.
If institutional adoption of altcoins, especially those built for cross-border payments, transactions, and global remittances, ever takes form, Bitcoin could be overshadowed, but it would not be an easy task.
The Power of Utility and Institutional Adoption for a Flippening
Unlike Bitcoin, many leading altcoins are designed with unique use cases that banks, enterprises, and governments can integrate directly into their systems to enhance offerings.
XRP was built for fast, low-cost cross-border payments and liquidity provision. Ripple has acquired Hidden Road, forming Ripple Prime, allowing its stablecoin RLUSD and XRP to be used by institutions as collateral.
HBAR is able to focus on high-throughput enterprise use cases such as tokenization, real-time settlement, compliance-friendly digital assets, and payments. In 2025, Hedera was utilized by Lloyds Bank, Aberdeen Investments, and Archax to tokenize UK money market funds on-chain.
![ETH almost flipped Bitcoin in 2017 [Source: blockworks]](https://allincrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-48.png)
Ethereum remains a foundational layer for decentralized applications, smart contracts, and tokenized finance, allowing layer 2 networks to be utilized in dozens of ways. Linea, a layer 2 network on Etheruem, is being adopted by Swift for their upcoming distributed ledger.
These altcoin networks offer capabilities that solve real-world problems by using smart contracts and protocols, something Bitcoin is naturally unable to do, unless it’s done on another layer for smart contracts.
The most credible path to an altcoin flipping Bitcoin may be in widespread institutional adoption of these technologies. If major banks begin routing remittances through XRP, issuing stablecoins or tokenized assets on Hedera, or anchoring their settlement systems via Ethereum, the economic value secured by these networks could lead to token price appreciation on a large scale.
Why Bitcoin Still Holds the Lead
Despite the narrative strength of utility-driven altcoins with many connections to banks and enterprises, Bitcoin retains several advantages as the first cryptocurrency and a historical narrative that outpaces altcoins.
Bitcoin has also been very secure since day one of its foundation. Insitonal investors desire security, and it’s a relief to know that Bitcoin cannot necessarily be hacked or have a DeFi meltdown, unlike altcoins, which can be prone to hacks, abuse, and network shutdowns.
Bitcoin is the most decentralized network, the hardest monetary asset, and the most trusted store of value in the crypto ecosystem. Trust given to Bitcoin is also echoed by large treasuries such as Michael Saylor’s Strategy, giving BTC more legitimacy compared to even Ethereum, despite Fundstrat ‘s (Tom Lee) ETH treasury building a reputation.
Institutions purchase Bitcoin not to run applications, but to preserve wealth. This simple, durable, and narrative-clean use case makes Bitcoin resilient to technological disruption.
Institutions tend to be conservative with financial upgrades. Even when, or if, utility altcoins gain more adoption, replacing Bitcoin as a dominant digital store of value would be a separate challenge.
What Would It Take for a Flippening to Happen?
For an altcoin to flip Bitcoin, massive institutional adoption might need to happen. An example would be global banks using XRP for settlements, enterprises issuing tokenized assets on HBAR at scale, or sovereign-grade applications running on Ethereum.
Regulatory clarity would also help. With the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts in the US, regulatory clarity for altcoins is becoming a reality. Regulations are needed for them to become adopted.
A scenario where an altcoin flips Bitcoin is possible, but it would require long-term infrastructural change. There could be a case of a stablecoin flipping Bitcoin once banks and Circle start introducing stablecoin payments to the world.
Visa, Mastercard, and Circle’s payment network are all planning to allow customers to use stablecoins for payments in 2026.
Could an altcoin flip Bitcoin? Yes, once certain thresholds are met, including regulatory ones. Currently, stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC could flip Bitcoin or Ethereum due to simple usage as an alternative to dollars and high demand.
The post Could an Altcoin Flip Bitcoin in the Near Future? first appeared on AllinCrypto.
