In a recent interview on "Fintech Focus"Podcast, Cory Johnson, Ripple's Chief Market Strategist, described the company's XRP cryptocurrency as" Bitcoin on steroids "and said its blockchain was" Bitcoin 2.0 ".
XRP: the future of remittance payments
During the interviewJohnson offered information on what XRP is designed to do, and how Ripple is using the power of the blockchain develop partnerships with banks and traditional financial institutions both at home and abroad:
We are trying to solve this serious problem, which is moving the money across the border. It's crazy in this technology era when I can send a text message to a friend in Rome with emojis and gifs connected to it, or I can send an email to a friend in Cape Town, South Africa in three seconds with an attached Excel spreadsheet and all kinds of information, but I can not send anything of value. I can not send money or value with less than 500 or 600 basis points of cost and it will take me three to five days.
Are they Really Comparable?
Indeed, Ripple does bring some benefits for financial initiatives. It offers these companies access to a rapid payment system, implements anti-money laundering efforts to ensure that funds are delivered and stored securely and presumably reduces fragmentation and concentration.
At the same time, the comparisons between BTC and XRP will surely bring some eyebrows raised here and there.
For one thing, Bitcoin is designed to serve more like a payment currency for goods and services. Despite continued price fluctuations and general volatility (as some analysts claim) at a historical minimum), Bitcoin is accepted by various merchants – mostly companies like Overstock.com – as a method of payment.
XRP, on the other hand, is not built to work this way, and instead works more along the lines of a system like SWIFT, a network of banking services for secure transfers of international money. Remittance payments are probably Ripple's main goal, even if Bitcoin remains the most popular choice among foreign workers.
Private Private Audience
In addition, the new bitcoins are extracted through an ongoing mining system where transactions are regularly added to the public blockchain. There are around 21 million bitcoins, of which 18 million are currently in circulation.
The XRP boasts more coins: around 50 billion. However, Bitcoin is considered a more decentralized system in the sense that most coins are available to public users and investors, while more than half of the world's XRP tokens remain in a escrow account held by Ripple executives.
Bitcoin remains a public entity, while Ripple is still a private company.
Maybe Ripple has what it takes
However, these differences do not prevent Johnson from "raising" the third cryptocurrency in the world.
He states:
A year ago, Ripple was signing new clients every six weeks. Now we sign one every six days, so it's a dramatic difference in terms of what happened. I think it's still so early because we're still selling it. I think there will be a day when the banks that are using our software are so happy that they are getting the accuracy they want. They are getting this incredible speed; throw away the socks. Imagine when you're used to something that takes you in five days that takes less than a minute, and that's just a turning point. This goes from the pony express to the e-mail.