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Once the bitcoin established itself as a viable currency that had the potential to hang around, other cryptocurrencies started popping up in its wake to try to dethrone it.
The two largest cryptocurrencies in the world by market capitalization are Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the third largest – Ripple – stands out from them. What distinguishes Ripple, and what do people think despite Bitcoin and Ethereum valgano much more?
What is the ripple?
Ripple is at the same time a company, a digital payment processing system and a cryptocurrency, which is also known as XRP. This is similar to bitcoin, but Ripple's blockchain system is very different, and the currency is owned by a company – Ripple – while bitcoin is extracted.
Ripple's infrastructure is designed to make transactions faster and more convenient for banks, so it's a more popular cryptocurrency option for large financial institutions. While Ripple is often used to refer to the XRP cryptocurrency, it is actually the company (formerly known as Ripple Labs) that owns most of the XRP. Ripple offers not only a number of payment systems, but it owns around 60 billion XRPs and holds 55 billion in a escrow account. They are able to sell up to a billion of these a month, even if they rarely do so.
Ripple's blockchain system, RippleNet, offers businesses and financial institutions a number of programs that help cross-border payments. This includes xCurrent (a payment processing system for banks), xRapid (allows financial institutions to minimize the cost of liquidity while using XRP as a bridge from a fiat currency to another) and xVia (allows companies to send payments via RippleNet).
The Ripple website boasts dozens of customers using their blockchain system, from the smallest to the largest banks in the country. American Express (AXP), for example, announced a partnership with Ripple in 2017 that allowed limited blockchain payments from US companies to British companies.
Ripple also boasts the versatility of the company, the ability to help large financial institutions and its exceptionally fast transaction time. The heart of all this is the currency itself – XRP.
XRP: what is the chain currency?
XRP, Ripple's digital resource, is presumably able to settle a payment within 4 seconds and handle 1,500 transactions per second.
Although Ripple differs from other cryptocurrencies in a number of ways, one way in which it remains similar is that there is a limited amount of XRP created, and that's all it will be. In the case of XRP, there are 100 billion of which 60% belong to Ripple.
If a financial institution uses xRapid to help cross-border payments from one fiat currency to another, XRP is the one that is used halfway through the liquidity transaction. This makes Ripple and XRP a bit unusual in the world of cryptocurrency: it is not really used as a currency, to the point that Ripple's CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, recently told a conference audience: "I do not think about the market for digital assets on the customer's experience. "
Since the XRP is owned by Ripple and is not really used as currency, some have claimed that it should be considered a security. Garlinghouse, however, said it believes it should not be, as it serves for utilitarian purposes, and owning XRP does not mean owning a part of the Ripple company.
Ripple against Bitcoin
Bitcoin, like the best-known cryptocurrency with the easiest market capitalization, is an easy comparison to make when discussing other cryptocurrencies. However, Ripple is quite different from bitcoin in several ways.
Some notable ways are the way Ripple sells itself, especially with regard to transaction speeds. One of the most important complaints about bitcoin is the duration of the transaction. With the extreme volatility of bitcoins, it creates the risk that when the transaction is finalized, you may not get the amount of BTC you expected when you first started. But with Ripple requiring 4-second long transaction times, this is far less troubling.
Bitcoin is entirely decentralized, as it was created to allow financial transactions without the need for a third party such as a bank. Ripple, on the other hand, literally sells its services to banks and financial institutions. Since most XRPs are owned by the company, the network is much more centralized.
Although everyone falls under the big umbrella of "cryptocurrencies", the purposes of ripple and bitcoin could not be more distant. Bitcoin was created in the hope of creating a completely new new financial system. Ripple, creating its digital token to help with asset transfers, seeks to assist existing financial systems and upgrade their transaction capabilities worldwide.
Is there Ripple Mining?
Another notable difference between ripple and bitcoin is mining. Bitcoins are known to be mined, a controversial process due to the combination of the expensive technology required and the large amount of energy needed to do so.
While all 21 million bitcoins have to be extracted, all 100 billion XRPs already exist and do not require any extraction. Up to now, the ripple has an outstanding supply of over 39 billion XRPs. Those interested in owning someone will have to buy it through a cryptocurrency exchange, although this is much cheaper than spending money on encryption platforms.
XRP price
The price of ripple has fluctuated wildly in its short history. At the moment, XRP has a value of 48 cents, with a market capitalization of about $ 18.8 billion, for CoinMarketCap.
For the vast majority of the XRP, its value has fallen below one dollar – if an XRP owner in 2016 saw that it was worth almost half a dollar now, they would be amazed at how much it has increased; the moment it arrived January 2017, the value of an XRP was only $ 0.006. He began to rise later in the year, and by the end of May had touched almost $ 0.40. It fell not long after, but it remained between 10 and 20 cents for the next 6 months or so.
December 2017 saw an important peak. From 14th, had exceeded 80 cents in value. A week later, on the 21stst, the value was above $ 1 for the first time in its history. A week later hit $ 2 and January 4, 2018 reached its peak: $ 3.84 in value and over $ 148 billion in market capitalization. It even surpassed Ethereum for the second capitalization of the cryptocurrency market. This was around the same time that the incredible rise of bitcoin peaked at over $ 20,000, leading to an explosion in the encrypted market.
Not surprisingly, such a massive increase was not sustainable for either of them. In February, the value of the ripple had shrunk to less than a dollar. Since the end of February, it has not yet reached that $ 1 mark.
Ripple Wallets
Corrugated wallets are similar to bitcoin wallets, with secure keys that allow transactions. With ripple, however, the wallets require a minimum of 20 XRPs for the initial deposit.
As with other cryptocurrency portfolios, there are several types, including software portfolios and mobile wallets available for Android and iOS. However, it is recommended to keep the ripple (and other cryptocurrencies) in a hardware portfolio. Hardware portfolios are much safer because they store offline content. One of the major hardware manufacturers with a portfolio that supports undulations is Ledger, whose Nano S portfolio for Ledgers allows for a ripple.
How to buy Ripple
Buying ripple is not as cheap as buying bitcoins. Occasionally a cryptocurrency exchange such as Bitstamp will allow you to trade USD for XRP, but it is rarely the case.
Other exchanges that sell ripples, including Coinbase and Binance, will instead need to exchange a different cryptocurrency like bitcoin or ether to acquire XRP. Regardless of the currency you are trading for XRP, you will need an exchange account and a rippled wallet in which you will send your XRP. Since XRP should be so notoriously fast, once you have everything in order and start the transaction, you should have your XRP relatively quickly. Find out more here in our guide on how to buy XRP.
