Hi everyone, this is my homework post for Professor @yohan2on about altcoins. This was an outstanding lecture and I am glad to be part of this class. I learned new things and I am going to discuss about Ripple (XRP).

Ripple

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Ripple is a decentralized platform that was launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs Inc. that is a US-based company. Ripple has been built on an open source protocol. The main purpose of Ripple was to facilitate users with speedy transactions with very low fees. Bitcoin being the mother of all cryptocurrencies, charges more to its user as fee for transactions and also the processing speed is slow as it takes about 10 minutes to process a transaction. Thus to solve this problem and to facilitate users, Ripple was launched and it takes about 5 seconds to complete transaction on blockchain. Ripple also claims to make cross border transactions with very fast speed and with very low fees.

What is XRP?

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XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the Ripple platform. It is a kind of digital token that is mainly used as a payment value on the Ripple network. XRP has been built for exchange purposes with other crypto assets facilitating users and financial institutions. Blockchain has no intermediary involved in it, thus it costs less to the users. XRP is also used for cross border transactions thus facilitating international payments without involvement of financial institutions. In this way, international payments are completed in very short time cost effectively.

How it works.

Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA) is used to verify transactions in Ripple network instead of Proof of Work (Pow) or Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol that is used by Bitcoin. This technology has been created for better transaction speed with very low cost. The process is very speedy in which all nodes on the network agree upon a transaction being processed and it takes about 3-5 seconds to complete it. In this way, ripple carries out transactions very fastly as compared to other payment methods available.

Ripple facilitate financial institutions to make global transactions thus serving as a global settlement network. It enables its users to transfer different currencies among them all over the world. Ripple does it by converting fiat currency into XRP and then again converting XRP into the desired fiat currency. This is how it is completed with the use of XRP as a mediator in very short time and with very less fees. In other methods, it can be very costly to convert one fiat currency to another fiat currency. This process of converting fiat currencies can be very lengthy but in case of XRP as mediator, it will take very less time to complete the transaction.

Advantages of Ripple.

Followings are some advantages of Ripple.

Speedy Transactions.

In Ripple network, transactions are completed in very short time. It takes about 5 seconds or less to complete a transaction. Thus enabling Ripple to be faster means of transactions as compared to Bitcoin.

Less costly.

Ripple charges very low processing fee that is about $0.0002 and it is very low as compared to any other payment method available.

No intermediary.

Ripple uses decentralized network that means there is no third party involved in it. Thus making it cost efficient method for transfer purposes.

Reliability.

Ripple has given solution to financial institutions like banks to transfer money cross borders very easily and within very short time. Thus it is increasing the reliability of Ripple as it completed a transaction in less than 5 seconds and it can also handle more than 10,000 transactions per second. It gives an edge to the Ripple on other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Disadvantages of Ripple.

There are some disadvantages connected with Ripple and these are as follows.

1. Ripple has concentrated on banks mostly rather than common user. So, Ripple can be used by banks mostly and common users can benefit less as compared to other crypto assets from it.

2. More than 60% of XRP are with the company; hence the company has the power to control this blockchain.

3. Ripple is pre-mined and its total supply has been completed. So there is very little or no incentive for common nodes to work on this network.

Market Cap of Ripple.

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Ripple is at No. 4 on coinmarketcap.com with market cap of $57.08B currently and its current rate is $1.26 in the market. Total supply of XRP is 100 billion and 60% of the total supply is with developers of the company.

Liquidity of XRP.

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XRP is available in many pairs and can be traded on many cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Huobi Global, KuCoin, Bitfinex etc. Below is the screenshot given which shows that it can be traded on almost all the cryptocurrency exchanges. Thus making it easily available at almost all the exchanges.

There are some wallets that also support the storing of XRP like Ledger Nano X wallet, Trust Wallet, Gatehub wallet, atomic wallet etc. So, it can be said that XRP can easily be traded and stored on different crypto exchanges and wallets.

My experience with Ripple.

I created my account on steemit in 2018 and I heard about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like ripple, litecoin etc.. After that, my experience was not good and I stopped working on steemit. Now after long time, I have rejoined steemit and only working in crypto academy. I am army man and I have not much time for crypto trading.

Conclusion.

Ripple offers solutions for major banking systems and several institutions have adopted Ripple network for payment purposes. Cross border transactions have been made easy and faster with cost efficient. Ripple has a great potential and it will be adopted by institutions in near future.

@yohan2on

Thanks and Regards,

@babawattoo