Ripple's success: because XRP was held fast in the midst of the Crypto market crisis

The XRP proved safe during this week's market crisis. Ripple's strategic partnerships, technological advances and community enthusiasm have allowed the cryptocurrency to gain ground on the market, resulting in a stellar performance of 2018.

In the last seven days, the markets have plummeted by 18%. However, the XRP fell to a modest 3.2%. Not only that, XRP has overtaken the long-standing incumbent Ethereum to claim number two of market capitalization.

What has led to Ripple's recent outstanding performance are the cases of tangible use in the financial sector.

In contrast to the uncertainty and scalability of the blockchain currency, such as Bitcoin, or the lack of institutional applications, such as Ethereum, Ripple is proving an uphill traction.

Short background

Ripple is a payment system and a network of remittances originally created by Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto with the company OpenCoin. OpenCoin changed its name to Ripple Labs in September 2013, and Arthur Britto left the company early.

XRP was originally published in 2012. The platform enables "secure, instant and almost free global financial transactions of any size without chargeback".

Ripple Labs released XRP in January 2013, creating 100 billion coins. Of those 100 billion, 80 billion were assigned to the company and 20 billion were divided between the two founders.

During the first major fund-raising cycle, the company was able to raise funds from Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Jesse Powell-founder and CEO of Kraken and a host of other investors.

In July 2014, a schism between the two founders generated Ripple's open source competitor, Stellar Lumens, with McCaleb taking over the new protocol.

In September 2016, the company gained enough momentum to raise $ 55 million from Japan's leading online trading business, SBI Holdings. In the exchange, the company sold 10.5% of its stake in Ripple.

Ripple continues its traction

Advancing rapidly towards 2018, Ripple gained significant momentum with a range of high-level customers, including American Express, Santander, RBC, IndusInd Bank and many others. Ripple has substantially more institutional clients on a larger scale than any other cryptocurrency.

In November 2018, Ripple kept its steam. The company announced a key partnership with the fifth bank of ASEAN, the CIMB Group. In a statement by the CEO of CIMB, Zafrul Aziz:

"We are seeing banks and financial institutions from all over the world lean into blockchain solutions because it allows a more transparent, faster and cheaper payment experience"

In November, another important partnership was established with the Japanese financial and banking services company Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). In a press release, the company stated that it will use XRP to manage cross-border payments with its subsidiaries in Brazil.

Other supporters of American Express claim that Ripple has the potential to replace expensive and slow banking systems such as SWIFT and bank transfers.

As of 2015, the SWIFT incumbent technology connects over 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries and processes over 15 million transactions a day. Ripple could disturb the whole system.

Ripple technology

What Ripple brings to the table is a unique blockchain-based technology. Instead of the usual work trial consent (PoW), Ripple uses a consensus ledger managed by a network of unpaid volunteer validators.

These validators compare the records of the transactions and therefore according to the majority, determine the order of these transactions and face the problems of double spending. Supporters of this system say it is safer and does not "discharge" electricity like a PoW system.

Not only is the consensus method unique, but Ripple's technology is also becoming real. Ripple & # 39; s xCurrent is already helping banks regulate international transactions. The technology allows real-time cross-border payments, reducing settlement times from days to seconds. And just last month, Ripple's introduction of xRapid significantly improved transaction throughput on the platform.

Ripple continually updates these features, with xCurrent 4.0 offering a number of further improvements. These applications and improvements in the real world undermine the ripple compared to other speculative projects.

Enthusiasm of the community

Another impetus to Ripple's popularity is the recent enthusiasm of the Ripple community. Many of Ripple's supporters have been emphatic on Twitter, and many former critics have been turned into supporters.

In a post on the community blog, Ripple's enthusiast Eric Dadoun paints a rosy picture for Ripple's future:

"Those of us in the XRP community should be quiet.There is no need to guess how Ripple, the IMF, the banks and others are no longer shy of what is coming in. The future is painted for all of us to see. "

A popular supporter of XRP, @XRPanda, had this to say:

While the market is bleeding, hashwar is happening, btc having hashrate, downsizing and centralized problem.#Ripple It's going on, earning new customers every week, and showing the world how a legitimate blockchain and cryptocurrency technology can benefit everyone.#XRP#LetsRippleTheWorld pic.twitter.com/0VqyLTnlmS

– 🐼 PandaRippleXRP 🐼 (@RipplePandaXRP) November 21, 2018

And also Ran Neu-Ner, guest of the Crypto Trader Show and former critic, recently gave up his statement that "XRP belongs to the trash" and has changed tone with a series of pro-Ripple tweets:

I made a lot of bad phone calls in the bear market, but no such bad thing as the day I said I would throw XRP in the trash!

– Ran NeuNer (@cryptomanran) November 19, 2018

Optimism reaches the top of Ripple Labs. On November 12th, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told Bloomberg that "Ripple is solving a real problem … and this is stimulating enthusiasm and enthusiasm". He believes that as more and more companies enter the space, institutional adoption will follow.

Although, Ripple still has its opponents. According to the CEO of TransferWise:

"If every bank in the world was going through the @Ripple network, it would be great. Yet, how many banks use Ripple today in production? It's a very short list "

Furthermore, much of the controversy surrounding Ripple still exists. There are still ongoing debates in the Twitter community about Ripple Lab's authority over cryptocurrency, its majority ownership of the Ripple supply, its financial security rating and its control over updates to the Ripple protocol. CryptoSlate will explore Ripple's centralization charges in a coming article this week.

However, everyone cares about their investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ripple is quietly gaining traction in the background. This bear market presented to Ripple an interesting opportunity for the jockey for the position in the race for the institutional acceptance of blockchain technology.

A special thanks to Eric Dadoun (@EDadoun) to contribute substantially to this article. The author of this article not keep XRP pressed.