Ripple (XRP)

This entire post, less the YouTube video, was copied from Wikipedia. I would have written a report on Ripple and XRP but I would never have been able to cover so much information. It is the best information I’ve come across on this company. If you are an investor, this is one company you should buy. I suggest you buy all you can at current prices and hold it; just hold it…

"Ripple does for payments what SMTP did for email, which is enable the systems of different financial institutions to communicate directly."

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple. Also called the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple protocol,[3] it is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called XRP (ripples). Released in 2012, Ripple purports to enable "secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks." It supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodity or any other unit of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes.[4][5] At its core, Ripple is based around a shared, public database or ledger,[6] which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exchanges and remittance in a distributed process.[7]

The network is decentralized and can operate without Ripple (enterprise), it cannot be shut down.[8] Among validators are companies, internet service providers, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[9][10]
Used by companies such as UniCredit, UBS and Santander, Ripple has been increasingly adopted by banks and payment networks as settlement infrastructure technology,[11] with American Banker explaining that "from banks' perspective, distributed ledgers like the Ripple system have a number of advantages over cryptocurrencies like bitcoin," including price and security.[12] (Source Wikipedia)

By 2014, Ripple Labs was involved in several development projects related to the protocol, releasing for example an iOS client app for the iPhone that allows iPhone users to send and receive any currency via their phone.[33][34][35] This Ripple Client app no longer exists.[36] In July 2014, Ripple Labs proposed Codius, a project to develop a new smart contract system that is "programming language agnostic."[37]
"...we think that the bigger opportunity is not just to create another digital currency – there are plenty of those - but rather to use that technology as a way of building a settlement system with no central operator."
— Ripple CEO Chris Larsen in December 2014[23]

Since 2013, the protocol has been adopted by an increasing number of financial institutions to "[offer] an alternative remittance option" to consumers.[38] Ripple allows for cross-border payments for retail customers, corporations, and other banks, and Larsen was quoted stating that "Ripple simplifies the [exchange] process by creating point-to-point and transparent transfers in which banks do not have to pay corresponding bank fees."[23] The first bank to use Ripple was Fidor Bank in Munich, which announced the partnership in early 2014. Fidor is an online-only bank based in Germany.[39] That September the New Jersey-based Cross River Bank and Kansas-based CBW Bank announced they would be using the Ripple protocol.[3] By December Ripple Labs began working with global payments service Earthport, combining Ripple's software with Earthport's payment services system. Earthport's clients include banks such as Bank of America and HSBC, and it operates in 65 countries. The partnership marked the first network usage of the Ripple protocol.[40] In December 2014 alone, the XRP price value rose over 200%, helping Ripple surpass litecoin to become the second biggest crypto-currency, and setting Ripple's market capitalization at close to half a billion dollars.[41] As of 2017 Ripple holds about $7 billion in terms of market cap[42].

In February 2015, Fidor Bank announced they would be using the Ripple protocol to implement a new real-time international money transfer network,[43] and in late April 2015, it was announced that Western Union was planning to "experiment" with Ripple.[32] In late May 2015, Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced it would be experimenting with Ripple[44] in relation to intrabank transfers.[45] Since 2012, representatives of Ripple Labs have professed support for government regulation of the crypto-currency market, claiming that regulations help businesses grow.[46] On May 5, 2015, FinCEN fined Ripple Labs and XRP II US$700,000 for violation of the Bank Secrecy Act,[26] based on the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's additions to the act in 2013.[47] Ripple Labs agreed to remedial steps to ensure future compliance, which included an agreement to only transact XRP and "Ripple Trade" activity through registered money services businesses (MSB), among other agreements such as enhancing the Ripple Protocol.[26] The enhancement won't change the protocol itself, but will instead add AML transaction monitoring to the network and improve transaction analysis.[47] As of 2017, the current release of the server (known as rippled) is version 0.70.1.[1]

The year 2015 and 2016 marked the expansion of Ripple (company) with the opening of an office in Sydney, Australia in April 2015[48] and the opening of European offices in London, United Kingdom in March 2016[49]then in Luxembourg in June 2016.[50] Many companies have subsequently announced experimenting and integrations with Ripple.[51] On June 13, 2016, Ripple obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, making it the fourth company with a BitLicense.[71]

On August 19, 2016, SBI Ripple Asia announced the creation of a Japanese consortium of banks in a new network that will use Ripple’s technology for payments and settlement.[72] The consortium was officially launched on October 25, 2016 with 42 member banks.[73] As of July 2017, 61 Japanese banks had joined, representing over 80% of total banking assets in Japan.[74]
On September 23, 2016, Ripple announced the creation of the first interbank group for global payments based on distributed financial technology. As of April 2017, members of the network known as the Global Payments Steering Group (GPSG) are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, Standard Chartered, UniCredit and Westpac Banking Corporation. The group will "oversee the creation and maintenance of Ripple payment transaction rules, formalized standards for activity using Ripple, and other actions to support the implementation of Ripple payment capabilities."[75][76] (Source Wikepidia)

Since its debut the Ripple protocol has received a fair amount of attention in both the financial and mainstream press. Ripple has recently been mentioned in industry articles by The Nielsen Company, the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, NACHA, and KPMG, with many of the articles examining Ripple's effect on internationalizing the banking industry.[121] In April 2015, American Banker asserted that "from banks' perspective, distributed ledgers like the Ripple system have a number of advantages over cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin," including security.[12] Wrote the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, "the adoption of distributed networks, such as Ripple, may help the [banking] industry realize faster processing, as well as greater efficiencies for global payments and correspondent banking."[121] Writing for Esquire about Ripple as a payment network in 2013, Ken Kurson said that "the big financial-service brands ought to feel about Ripple the way the record labels felt about Napster."[122] The New York Times website Dealbook points out in 2014 that “[Ripple] is winning something that has proved elusive for virtual currencies: involvement from more mainstream players in the financial system.”[11] In August 2015, Ripple has been awarded as Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum.[123 (Source Wikipedia)

XRP is the native currency of the Ripple network that only exists within the Ripple system.[109] XRP are currently divisible to 6 decimal places, and the smallest unit is called a drop with 1 million drops equaling 1 XRP.[109]There were 100 billion XRP created at Ripple's inception, with no more allowed to be created according to the protocol's rules.[110] As such, the system was designed so XRP is a scarce asset with decreasing available supply.[110] Not dependent on any third party for redemption, XRP is the only currency in the Ripple network that does not entail counterparty risk, and it is the only native digital asset. The other currencies in the Ripple network are debt instruments (i.e. liabilities), and exist in the form of balances.[2] Users of the Ripple network are not required to use XRP as a store of value or a medium of exchange. Each Ripple account is required, however, to have a small reserve of 20 XRP[111] (US$6.58 as of May 16, 2017[112]). The purpose for this requirement is discussed in the anti-spam section.

Comparisons to competition

Though Ripple is generally either third or fourth in market capitalization to bitcoin as a digital currency,[124] many members of the press have described Ripple as an up-and-coming rival to bitcoin. In late 2014, Bloomberg called bitcoin a "failing" digital currency, after bitcoin's currency fell 54 percent in value in one year. Ripple was described as a significant competitor, in part because of its real-time international money transfers.[125] Bill Gates supported this outlook and mentioned the Ripple system when asked about bitcoin in 2014, stating "there’s a lot that bitcoin or Ripple and variants can do to make moving money between countries easier and getting fees down pretty dramatically. But bitcoin won’t be the dominant system.”[126] About Ripple's allowance of any electronic value holder, the Vice President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve and professor at Simon Fraser University, David Andolfatto, stated in 2014 that "Ripple is a currency-agnostic protocol. Ripple is the winner. It processes anything."[127] For its creation and development of the Ripple protocol (RTXP) and the Ripple payment/exchange network, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recognized Ripple Labs as one of 2014's 50 Smartest Companies in the February 2014 edition of MIT Technology Review.[128]

https://ripple.com/

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