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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