What Is Ripple and How Does it Work?
Once bitcoin established itself as a viable currency that had potential to stick around, other cryptocurrencies began popping up in its wake to try to dethrone it.
The two biggest cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap
are Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the third largest - Ripple - stands out from
them. What is it that sets Ripple apart, and what has people talking about it
despite Bitcoin and Ethereum being worth so much more?
What Is Ripple?
Ripple is at once a company, a digital-payment processing
system and a cryptocurrency, which is also known as XRP. This is similar to
bitcoin, but Ripple's blockchain system is very different, and the currency is
owned by the one company - Ripple - whereas bitcoin is mined.
The infrastructure of Ripple is designed to make
transactions quicker and more convenient for banks, so it is a more popular
cryptocurrency option for larger financial institutions. While Ripple is
often used to refer to XRP cryptocurrency, it is actually the company (formerly
known as Ripple Labs) that holds most of the XRP. Ripple not only offers a
number of payment systems, but owns approximately 60 billion XRP and holds 55
billion of it in an escrow account. They're able to sell up to one billion of
these a month - though they rarely do. More Visit: What is cryptocurrency XRP
Ripple's blockchain system, RippleNet, offers businesses and
financial institutions a number of programs that help cross-border payments.
This includes xCurrent (a payment processing system for banks), xRapid (allows
financial institutions to minimize liquidity cost while using XRP as a bridge
from one fiat currency to another), and xVia (allows businesses to send
payments via RippleNet).
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Ripple's website boasts dozens of clients that use
their blockchain system, from smaller banks to some of the largest in the
country. American Express (AXP) - Get Report , for
example, announced a partnership with Ripple in 2017 that allowed for limited
blockchain payments from U.S. businesses to U.K. businesses.
Ripple also brags of the company's versatility, ability to
help large financial institutions, and its exceptionally fast transaction time.
At the heart of all of this is the currency itself - XRP.
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