I’m sure you’ve heard of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and many other cryptocurrencies by now. But did you know that XRP is one of the most popular digital assets available? It’s been around for a short period of time, but the cryptocurrency managed to take a spot in 3rd position in market cap rankings. Although it’s not as fun to talk about as the other crypto giants like Bitcoin or Ethereum, it’s still a solid investment opportunity that you might want to consider.
The ability to send $100 abroad instantly at a fee of just 15 cents (or even less in some cases) is extremely attractive to both banks and customers alike. If you are thinking of adding Ripple to your portfolio, you might need to keep reading to learn more about the crypto before you commit yourself.
What Is Ripple?
Ripple is a blockchain-based payment protocol that has been designed to offer fast and inexpensive transactions between two parties. It was originally founded in 2012 by Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen but was later taken over by its parent company, Ripple Labs Inc., which now controls all of the XRP tokens.
Ripple provides a global payment system that is based on a shared public ledger (RippleNet). This ledger records all transactions across all participating ledgers, allowing for instant verification of assets moving through the network. The bottom line is that this system can be used as an alternative method for completing cross-border payments, whether it be for personal transactions or business purposes.
This native currency for this platform goes by the name XRP; however, you may also see it listed as “Ripple,” “XRP,” or just plain “R.”
What Problem Does Ripple Solve
Ripple is a low-cost, high-speed way to send money internationally. It’s a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) and currency exchange, remittance network, and currency that allows banks to settle cross-border payments with end-to-end transparency.
Using Ripple means you can send money in seconds, not days, at a fraction of the cost of traditional banking or other payment systems. You can also hold XRP as an investment without worrying about liquidity issues because it’s easy to convert your XRP into other currencies through your bank account or another cryptocurrency exchange like Binance or Coinbase Pro.
How Many Ripple Coins Are In Circulation?
The total number of Ripple coins in circulation is 100 billion. However, this number doesn’t tell the whole story.
Because Ripple was pre-mined and has a controlled supply, the XRPs that were created at Ripple’s inception represent half of the total supply (50 billion). The other 50 billion were distributed as ripples to three companies: Ripple Labs, which owns 20 billion; OpenCoin (later rebranded as Ripple Labs), which owns 10 billion; and Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), which owns 8 trillion SDFs.
If we subtract those coins from our 100-billion total, then there are only 80 billion XRP remaining – which means that less than half of all possible ripples are currently in circulation.
What Is XRP?
Ripple XRP is the currency used on the Ripple network. It’s not quite as simple as that, though. In order to understand what XRP is and how it works, you need to know a little bit about how RippleNet and its technology work.
RippleNet is a payment network that uses blockchain technology (the same kind of technology behind Bitcoin) to facilitate faster international payments between banks. The first step in using this system is setting up a trade account with one or more banks in order to connect through their existing systems using APIs (application programming interface).
This allows you to make transactions with any bank connected via the RippleNet payment system instead of going through multiple third parties like SWIFT or SwiftBanker would normally require.
XRP acts like an intermediary currency between banks during transactions on RippleNet since there aren’t enough IOUs available yet from other institutions for all possible amounts upfront. And it must be exchanged immediately before being used again anyway, so there isn’t room for delay unless someone wants to hold onto some XRP for longer periods of time but not necessarily long enough for trading purposes.
How Does Ripple Ledger Work
The Ripple ledger is a system that allows for the seamless exchange of money, goods, and services. The technology behind Ripple is called distributed ledger technology (DLT), and it serves as an open-source protocol for exchanging value. It’s a unique system that has certain advantages over traditional financial institutions like banks or payment companies.
The difference between XRP and Ripple
XRP is a digital asset used by XRP Ledger to perform its role in the network. You could think of it as being similar to how you might think about shares in a company: where one share doesn’t give you ownership of anything, but rather shares represent part ownership in an entity or company, so does one XRP represents part ownership in the XRP Ledger network itself.
Advantages of Ripple over Other Cryptocurrencies
Ripple has several advantages over other cryptocurrencies, including:
- Transactions happen in seconds or minutes, not hours.
- It’s more energy efficient.
- It’s highly scalable and can handle large amounts of transactions at once.
- It’s got strong security with its own cryptographic protocol, the Secure Exchange Protocol (SXP), which uses elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to encrypt messages sent between users before sending them to the network for verification and processing by miners. That means that you’re protected from hackers who might try to get into your account by stealing your password or PIN number.
What Factors Affect the Price of Ripple
· Market capitalization
As with any cryptocurrency, the market capitalization of a coin is probably one of the most important factors in determining its price. The market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the circulating supply by the current price. As Ripple (XRP) has a total supply of 100 billion, its market cap is around $20 billion. This makes Ripple (XRP) one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap currently.
· Supply and demand
Supply and demand are two factors that influence prices throughout financial markets. They also affect cryptocurrencies such as XRP in different ways than they do traditional assets like stocks and bonds. For example, when an asset becomes more scarce due to low supply or high demand for it during peak periods, that would drive up prices exponentially until equilibrium is reached again between supply and demand levels.
· Technological features behind XRP Ledger
The technology protocol behind the XRP ledger allows cross-border payments without requiring intermediary banks or other intermediaries. This makes it possible for everyone, including individuals, to send money directly over the internet instead of going through third-party institutions such as international banks who often charge high fees per transaction due to their centralized nature.
What Are the Use Cases of Ripple
You can use Ripple (XRP) to make fast and cheap payments. You can use XRP to send money across borders or just across town. You can also use it for remittance payments and general payments, like tipping someone on Twitter with cryptocurrency. The best part? It’s not just cheaper than other cryptocurrencies – it’s faster as well!
You can use XRP to pay content creators online by sending them micropayments in real-time directly from your wallet. This means creators get paid immediately when they create content instead of waiting days or weeks for their payment processor to process the funds.
What Are Disadvantages of Ripple
There are a few disadvantages of Ripple that you should be aware of:
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Ripple is not decentralized
In fact, the company behind it has an enormous amount of control over how money flows through the system. This means that if something goes wrong with their servers, all transactions could be halted for hours or even days until everything is fixed.
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Ripple is not anonymous
Users must provide their personal information before making a transaction on the network. As such, this means that your transactions will be traceable back to you if someone wants them traced! Additionally, XRP transactions can only be made from one account address at a time. That means that anyone who knows any account address can easily track all their previous transactions down!
How to Buy Ripple
To buy Ripple (XRP), you’ll need to find a cryptocurrency exchange that lists XRP. You can then purchase the cryptocurrency with fiat currency or another digital asset such as bitcoin. For example, if you’re in the U.S., Coinbase allows you to buy XRP with your bank account or credit/debit card.
