The cryptocurrency market, while having begun well in the second quarter of 2019, may be ending the year far from it.

Bitcoin which rose from $3,000 to $14,000 representing over 300% has dropped to $7,000 lately.

XRP has done worse, crashing to and remaining at around $0.19. This has raised questions as to whether 2020 will be better for the two cryptocurrencies.

Senior analyst at eToro, Mati Greenspan thinks things will get better for both Bitcoin and XRP in 2020.

When asked about the price of BTC and XRP for 2020 and beyond, Greenspan said the long term is promising for both coins.

He added that BTC may see its highs very soon if it repeats its 2019 performance.

“Prospects are still quite bullish for the long term on both coins in my view. If BTC does as well is it did this year we could be testing the highs v soon.,” he said.

XRP might take longer

While Bitcoin’s performance in 2019 is good enough to take it to new highs in 2020, the same cannot be said of XRP.

XRP only managed to go above $0.4 momentarily as its highest price in the year.

Although Greenspan believes the long term is promising for XRP, the short term is not. XRP faces selling pressure from Ripple itself.

Ripple which is in charge of XRP has been periodically selling large amounts of XRP.

This has led the XRP community and the entire crypto space to accuse Ripple of holding over 60% of the total XRP supply.

Ripple has also been accused of manipulating the price of the token as they sell from their escrow accounts.

Greenspan also says there are issues with adoption within the Ripple network.

Specifically, he said banks can use Ripple’s remittance network, RippleNet without using XRP.

This makes it optional to adopt the token when using the Ripple network for payment settlement. As adoption is a major determinant of price performance, XRP may be take long to come up unless these factors are dealt with.

For now, things remain gloomy

While we can look forward to a better 2020 for BTC and XRP, their performances for now are still not very encouraging.

XRP is still under $0.2 and Bitcoin which had risen to $7,600 is currently below $7,500 as it continues to move sideways.

With just two days left, the crypto community may have given up on the market for this year.

However, the market can be quite unpredictable and things may turn around within the remaining time.

The market is already turning green at the time of writing this article according to Coinmarketcap with Ethereum (ETH) leading the top 10 with a gain of 3.90% gain in the last 24 hours.

Do you think things may change in 2019 or we have to wait till 2020 as Greenspan says?