Although bitcoin has the majority of the public’s attention when it comes to cryptocurrency, Ripple is a company that should not be overlooked. Ripple, which was founded in 2012, sells a currency settlement and exchange platform as well as the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency (by market capitalization).
Its value proposition, however, is not based on being a Bitcoin clone. It derives from the fact that it is one of the most unique cryptocurrencies available.
Ripple aspires to speed up cross-border payment transfers and, as a result, improve rather than replace the current global payment system, as its competitors do.
Ripple as a Currency Exchange
The cryptocurrency XRP, developed by Ripple, is popular among large financial organizations such as Santander and American Express because it can dramatically speed up cross-border payment transactions.
XRP is meant to quickly convert any fiat currency into another, allowing financial institutions to quickly transfer money from one currency to another and move funds throughout the world. In reality, XRP can execute 1,500 transactions per second and settle payments in four seconds.
Similarities between Ripple and Bitcoin
Ripple, like Bitcoin, has set a limit of 100 billion XRP coins that it will ever produce. Ripple holds roughly 60% of the total supply, with the remainder in circulation. Ripple has the ability to sell up to one billion XRP per month, but they rarely do so because dumping a large amount of XRP into circulation might cause the cryptocurrency’s value to plummet.
A Token with a Unique Purpose
Ripple and Bitcoin may be grouped under the same crypto banner, but their purposes are very distinct. Rather of destroying the current global payment system and replacing it with its own, Ripple intends to improve it for years to come.
Ripple’s Blockchain Enhances the Current Global Payments System and Doesn’t Require Mining
Because the cryptocurrency isn’t as decentralized as other big currencies like Bitcoin, the XRP transfer process is quick. Bitcoin’s fundamental goal is to establish a new global currency and payment system that can connect customers and suppliers directly, bypassing the need for a financial intermediary such as a bank.
To do this, their blockchain entirely decentralizes the cryptocurrency by requiring a network of millions of miners to solve complex cryptography puzzles to validate each transaction, rather than relying on a central authority such as a bank to do it.
Ripple, on the other hand, intends to improve the present global payment system by speeding up the process of cross-border money transfers. As a result, RippleNet, the currency’s blockchain, requires only 25 independent nodes to agree on the true status of XRP’s public ledger and, as a result, validate its transactions. These nodes are controlled by various financial institutions, IT businesses, and Ripple itself.
This makes XRP far faster than Bitcoin in verifying and processing transactions because it only requires 25 nodes to validate transactions instead of millions of worldwide miners.
Ripple also owns and releases the whole quantity of XRP in combination with RippleNet’s validation process, which means you don’t have to spend vast amounts of time and electricity mining XRP like you do with bitcoins.