Ripple and XRP – An Overview
XRP was launched in 2013 and is amongst the oldest altcoins. The company Ripple Labs came up in 2012. Ripple Labs, introduced its public network at the beginning of 2013, when the transactions started officially. Ripple, according to some, dates back to pre-Bitcoin times. Ryan Fugger of Vancouver, Canada, helped people to give credit to strangers through known folks. He built RipplePay between 2005 and 2006, empowering people to operate their banks that could give credit.
The idea enlarged into a business, co-founded by Chris Larsen, Arthur Britto, and Jed McCaleb. Ripple Labs, the software company, began to make a network to disrupt financial services. They wanted to quicken the payments across the border besides making them cheaper and safer, and they managed to get rid of the middleman.
Middlemen like Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT accounted for $5 trillion daily transactions. SWIFT says that Ripple’s impact is limited and a slow network that cannot scale and is suitable for intrabank solutions.
People are generally confused about Ripple as there are two different entities with the same name. One is the XRP, a Bitcoin alike bit with a coin, and the other is the network, the Ripple payments network. Both share the name Ripple. The XRP ledger offers are very different from Bitcoin-like decentralized blockchain.
The difference between Ripple and XRP?
Often confused, Ripple and XRP or the Ripple digital asset are not the same things. The confusion is valid as the names are the same, and they have a parallel origin. But they have distinct features and differences.
Ripple
Ripple is a private initiative of a software company, and founded the open-source Ripple Protocol, having the RCL or Ripple Consensus Ledger. It made a set of solutions for financial institutions like banks, digital currency exchanges, and non-financial institutions. RCL uses the technology as a distributed ledger to help allocate tokens representing the fiat currency or the cryptocurrency, or any other unit value. It is an open protocol that anyone can access and avail of without any prior permission from Ripple. The banks and non-financial institutions include the protocol into their system, separate from the Ripple company. The network users authenticate the transactions by agreement.
XRP
The Ripple Consensus Ledger or RCL is many times confused as XRP, the Ripple digital asset. RCL’s inherent token is XRP. XRP helps to transfer money between various currencies on the network. At inception, the creators churned out an official number of hundred billion units of XPR, which cannot lessen or go above the amount. XRP came into being before the inception of the company, Ripple Labs. The creators of XRP gifted its company 80 percent of the total XRP, reserving only twenty billion for themselves.
Since it is centrally controlled, it cannot be mined and has become popular with businesses and banks. XRP bridges the currency, which is a great function of XRP. The traditional systems for settlement use USD as the basic currency to convert fiat currency. XRP was constructed to overrule USD as the basic currency for the financial institutions. This is done by converting the fiat value to XRP instead of USD, eliminating margins and exchange rate fees to speed up the processing duration.
Ripple the network and XRP the cryptocurrency
There is no direct connection between Ripple’s business value, its patented payment network, or digital asset XRP’s price. But their fortunes are intermingled as Ripple Labs possesses 60 percent of the tokens in circulation currently. XRP held the second position in December 2017 for a short period amounting to USD 86 billion in the market-capital. It surpassed Ethereum’s Ether cryptocurrency in 24 hours, which ranked at the second position after Bitcoin. XRP price fell due to technically based criticism, legal disputes, and many tokens put into the market.
The crypto world sees Ripple as a practical solution that aids in settlement of the financial world’s challenges, yet others feel it is not truly a decentralized cryptocurrency. Its nodes lay in the control of a central issuer. It’s the protocol being centralized, as compared to other public blockchains, which are permission-less, critics find it more vulnerable to hackers. Since the Ripple Labs and XRP do not have sufficient clarity, they do not know whether the interests can be manipulated. But enterprises still enjoy Ripple as the fastest transaction token that has outdone Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, or Litecoin, and it is the preferred choice.
Future for Ripple?
More than three hundred financial institutions have joined RippleNet, XRP’s network. It has partnered with MoneyGram at a below 10% stake, and Money Gram, in exchange, is using XRP for settling payments across the border. Ripple has aided Western Union, Santander, and American Express. Ripple has made a foothold in the FX International Payments section of American Express and shifting corporate funds in real-time with Santander in a matter of seconds.
This type of market is ready for Ripple and disruption, along with credit card companies and banks. Ripple sees a bright future in a competitive market that needs money transfers, a disruptive solution for banks. It can add stablecoins and trade all types of digital assets attached to the real-world value. Although, if you want to invest or want to buy Ripple then you must get an idea about its future prices. Go through Ripple Prediction by our experts to know about the possible future prices of Coin.
Conclusion
Ripple Labs software company made a network to disrupt financial services to quicken cross-border payments and eliminate middlemen like SWIFT or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Ripple and XRP are confused many times. XRP, the digital asset, came in before the Ripple Labs company. The company created 100 billion XRP, which cannot lessen or increase.
XRP is not decentralized as it is controlled by a central. XRP plans to replace the traditional system that currently uses USD. It wants the future fiat value conversion in XRP and eliminates margins and exchange rate fees. XRP does faster transactions than any of the cryptocurrencies in the market today, including Bitcoin, Etherium, etc.
