What is Ripple?

The most important thing to know about Ripple, it is both a platform and a currency. It is an open source protocol, which is designed to allow fast and cheap transactions.  Ripple was once a company, a digital-payment processing system, and a cryptocurrency, which is also called as XRP. This is similar to Bitcoin, but Ripple’s Blockchain system is very different, and its currency is owned by the one company-Ripple-whereas Bitcoin is mined.

The two biggest cryptocurrencies in the world decided by market cap are Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the third largest one is –Ripple- Stands out from them.

The Ripple’s infrastructure was designed to make transactions quicker and more convenient for banks, and so it is a more popular cryptocurrency option for most of the larger financial institutions. Ripple is firmly known as Ripple Labs as a company and this holds most of the XRP.

What is XRP?

It is a token, used for representing the transfer of value across the Ripple Network. The motive of XRP is to be a mediator for other-both cryptocurrencies and fiat – exchanges. The best way to describe XRP is, it is a ‘Joker’. Not the creepy Batman enemy, But card that can be any other card. If you want to exchange dollar to euro, it can be dollar with dollars and euros to minimize the commission. The transaction cost on Ripple is $0.00001

Features of Ripple (XRP)

Following are the key features of Ripple, given below

• Near Zero fees
• Settlement finality (instantly)
• Scalability
• Liquidity
• Decentralized ledger
• Growing Ecosystem

Usage of Ripple

1. Low commission currency exchange. There are N numbers of currencies that can’t be directly converted to each other. So for that, banks need to use the US dollar as a mediator. And there is a double commission: converting currency A to USD and USD to currency B. Ripple is work as a mediator between them, but much cheaper than USD.
2. Fast international transactions. Average transaction time is 4 seconds. Compare it to an hour or more for Bitcoin and a few days for regular banking systems.
3. Payment ecosystem. The user can basically issue his own currency for a fast and cheap transaction. For example, one can create a currency to buy and see vintage vinyl or action figures between the collectors.

Benefits of Ripple

• Ripple is originally designed as a day to day payment system, so it is much more power safe than Bitcoin. As the results, the transactions are so much fast and cheap also.
• Ripple has started as an official organization, as its main focus is to be used by banks. So this is not only a subject of multiple regulation checks as many other cryptocurrencies.
• Ripple has the ability to be exchanged for any currency or valuable (like gold) with a unified minimal commission.

Banks which supports XRP

• Santander
• Axis Bank
• Yes Bank
• Westpac
• Union Credit
• NBAD
• UBS

Is Ripple a good Investment?

Pros

• As highlighted above, Ripple is an official organization with the trust of many banks it’s not another Blockchain startup from a no-name company.
• No inflation. All of these tokens are initially mined and already exist.
• The more banks use it as their transaction platform, the higher the value of XRP. If all the banks decide to use it as a unified bank currency instead of processing redundant currency exchanges – it will make a nice fortune for all the early birds who invested in Ripple.

Cons

• It is highly centralized. The whole idea of using cryptocurrency is to remove centralized control. As the tokens are already mined, and these Ripple developers can decide when and how much to release, or not to release. So, it will basically look like a banking investment.
• In addition to centralization, today it is pretty much a monopoly as Ripple Labs owns 61 percent of the coins.
• It is open source – very smart, but still, once the code is accessible there is a good chance many people will try to hack it. Some of them even might succeed.

Ripple’s criticism

Although there is a long list of very respectable banks that are planning to use Ripple, according to the Financial Times most of them are still in the testing stage. The few of them who are actually transacting in real money by using the platform but not the token. So, perhaps banks “are not that into Ripple”.

Ripple can freeze your transactions.

Future of Ripple

At present Ripple, has the potential to move up a notch 2018. And all the above statement mention above has proven that the future of Ripple is bright. Because of Sheer dollar