10 Cool Facts About Ripple

The final month of 2017 saw the value of Ripple rise from $0.25 to $3.75— that’s a 1,400 percent price increase in one month.

Ripple (XRP) has been the center of many disagreements between crypto and blockchain enthusiasts since it jumped into the limelight in December 2017, despite the fact it has been being developed and traded since the last months of 2013. Ripple, XRP, brings blockchain solutions to financial institutions across the world and already has partners preparing to implement their products, meaning there are a plethora of cool facts about Ripple that the average person may not know!

Ripple (XRP) is the only blockchain designed for financial institutions.

Although many people argue that blockchain technology was introduced for disruption and decentralization, Ripple Labs has taken another approach to blockchain applications. While there are many ways that Ripple isn't like other cryptocurrencies, one of them stands out above them all: They are focusing only on products designed for financial institutions.

Many people dislike(ed) Ripple for being a centralized cryptocurrency. However, for blockchain technology adoption to increase, a centralized blockchain that helps change the ways financial institutions move money around is a great step forward.

Ripple’s Scalability

Ripple has almost limitless scalability. This is part of what makes ripple a great investment. Currently XRP handles 1,500 transactions per second and can handle the same number of transactions of VISA without any congestion—and charges a much lower fee to do so.

Since VISA currently handles around 2,000 transactions a second—you can see the benefit of Ripple over some of the other blockchains which get congested with much lower levels of transactions.

xCurrent, xRapid, and xVia in one package!

This is one of the facts about Ripple few people know. One of the biggest arguments against Ripple was that one of their biggest products, xCurrent, doesn’t actually use the cryptocurrency XRP. This would mean the xCurrent system does not help crypto investors as it will not affect the price of the XRP token.

Luckily, Ripple Labs announced they will be providing the option of all three protocols within one single package. xRapid uses XRP to move money from one bank to another. A Mexican bank can convert Pesos to XRP and send them to the UK, where it can be converted back to Pound Sterling. xVia doesn’t require the use of XRP, however if institutions want liquidity—which they will require—then they will have to use xRapid alongside of xVia. This is great news for those who are holding XRP as an investment.

Cheap Transactions

Although not completely free, the transaction costs for sending XRP are extremely low, remaining a fraction of a cent per transaction currently. They do increase with increased traffic on the network, but the minimum transaction cost required remains below one US cent.

Environmental Sustainability

Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies where the coins are mined, all 100 billion XRP coins already exist. Although Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a great way to attempt to decentralize a currency, it also requires huge amounts of electricity. Currently the amount of power required to produce a single Bitcoin could run the electrics of four households in the US for 24 hours.

Ripple isn’t looking to be decentralized in the same way that Bitcoin wanted to be and therefore does not need to use such unsustainable methods to work as fast, effective blockchain.

Secure Transactions

The public-ledger which XRP uses to record all transactions is open source code. A large community of "trusted validators" and also a team of full-time engineers work non-stop in developing and maintaining the ledger.

Although Ripple is considered to be more centralized than most blockchains, having the ledger work in this manner is does make the blockchain pseudo-decentralized. It makes the ledger more resilient and resistant to single points of failure—the decentralization of Ripple is an ongoing process. This is one of the often forgotten facts about Ripple.

Easy to Buy

XRP cryptocurrency is extremely easy to buy, whether you are an individual investor or a financial institution. For financial institutions it may be best to contact Ripple Labs directly. For individual investors looking to obtain XRP, it can be found on most of the large exchanges—simply exchange crypto (or even fiat on some) for XRP and then move it off the exchange to your Ripple Wallet.

Ripple’s 55 Billion XRP Escrow

Currently only 45 percent of the total 100,000,000 XRP coins are in circulation. That’s 45,000,000 coins—not a small number! However, Ripple is holding 55 percent (55,000,000XRP) in escrow for future release into circulation when they have more adoption from bigger financial institutions. Considering Ripple already has a huge number of partnerships with Asian banks, American Express, Santander, and there are talks of MoneyGram and Western Union getting involved—it would seem that the number held in escrow may be reduced sooner than expected.

A Solid Track Record of Delivering

Unlike many of the new cryptocurrencies flooding the market, Ripple is not a new-comer. XRP has been being developed for over five years and has an excellent track record of delivering the products it promises on time, with few (if any) flaws, and in a very professional manner.

XRP is here to stay.

Unlike many of the cryptocurrencies that are out there right now, even potentially some of the current top ten on CoinMarketCap—XRP is not going to disappear and be made redundant.

Ripple Labs have managed to obtain enough partnerships and prove themselves to be extremely efficient and professional in what they are doing. Not only that, they have five years of development behind them and still don’t have a competitor that is trying to deliver a product similar to theirs yet. For this reason, Ripple and XRP are going to be here to stay—it’s nice to have some certainty in crypto in these times of uncertainty!

The Ripple network is a new generation of Blockchain and the first that has the sole intention of working with financial institutions and not against them like many blockchain projects. Hopefully, these facts about ripple helped you learn something new!