How to Buy Ripple

XRP is the token behind Ripple, a cryptocurrency network designed to facilitate global payments.

Keep in mind that Ripple refers to the technology company that offers solutions to efficiently send money around the world via RippleNet, its global payments network. XRP is the digital asset that is independent of Ripple and backed by the open-source XRP Ledger. It is impossible to discuss XRP without discussing Ripple, as the technology requires XRP, providing its main use case. Importantly, Ripple does not own or control XRP.

The Team and Their Track Record

XRP is not controlled by Ripple, nor is it owned by Ripple. However, the technology behind Ripple is, in many ways, what drives the use and adoption of XRP. This comes from the fact that XRP is used to facilitate the cross-border transactions that Ripple encourages with its technology.

The main players in the creation of Ripple were Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb.

• Chris Larsen: He is a privacy activist, business executive, and angel investor. As of 2018, he earned the title of the richest person involved in cryptocurrency. Before founding Ripple, he had co-founded multiple online financial services, including E-loan, an online mortgage lender, in 1996.
• Jed McCaleb: He is well-known as an entrepreneur and programmer. In addition to co-founding Ripple, he has also co-founded Stellar, Overnet, eDonkey, and Mt. Gox. For those concerned about his reputation, McCaleb had sold his share of Mt. Gox well before the hack on that exchange.

Despite not owning or controlling all XRP, Ripple does own the majority of the tokens. As such, the company has a very strong influence on XRP, making it centralized.

Ripple has more than 350 employees in nine global offices, including its headquarters in San Francisco. The Ripple leadership team includes those with backgrounds in compliance, financial services, and technology. The following image shows the leadership team.

Ripple’s investors include those in the following image, which includes both strategic investors and venture capital firms that are globally recognized.

For those who are slightly uncomfortable with the level of influence Ripple has on XRP, consider that Ripple also dedicates resources to various good causes. Ripple for Good forges partnerships with social entrepreneurs and non-profits to help support technical development, research, and education. Efforts include:

• Working towards financial inclusion for the unbanked as well as vulnerable populations thanks to the use of digit asset technology and the blockchain
• Exploring potential applications of digital asset and blockchain technology that have positive environmental and social impacts
• Inspiring education, research, and innovation in fintech, digital assets, and blockchain
• Supporting the University Blockchain Research Initiative, which supports new curriculum development, research, and technical projects. There are currently 29 academic partners.

Brief History of News to Date

A brief history of XRP and Ripple shows that the interest in the project has been steadily growing. There were more than 100 banks working with Ripple by 2018, and there are already more than 300.

Some of the other important points in the history of XRP and Ripple include:

• Ryan Fugger first implemented Ripple coin in 2004 in Vancouver, Canada.
• Fugger started building Ripplepay to provide secure payment options.
• XRP was created based on that Ripplepay protocol in May 2011.
• Ripple transaction protocol was officially launched in 2012.
• XRP briefly being the second-largest cryptocurrency on Dec. 29, 2017, with its $73 billion market capitalization.

The following chart provides a visual representation of XRP’s history via its price over time:

What Problem Does XRP Solve?

XRP aims to solve several of the problems associated with traditional fiat transactions as well as with some cryptocurrency transactions, including:

• Improving Speed: Ripple is quicker than traditional transactions as it can be settled within just 3 to 5 seconds. This is also quicker than many other cryptocurrency transactions, as Bitcoin transactions take up to 60 minutes, Litecoin transactions take 10 minutes, and Ethereum transactions take 2 minutes.
• Enhancing Scalability: XRP also improves upon the scalability problems associated with other cryptocurrencies. For example, Bitcoin can only handle 3 to 6 transactions per second, and Ethereum can only handle 15. XRP consistently completes 1,500 transactions a second and continues to do so 24/7. Additionally, on July 15, 2019, XRP handled more than 65,000 transactions per second without an issue, the same volume as Visa.
• Getting Rid of Intermediaries: With traditional financial transactions, there is always an intermediary, such as the bank or payment provider. This increases the time associated with a transaction, as well as the cost, as the intermediary usually charges a fee for their role. By contrast, Ripple eliminates intermediaries, replacing them with XRP and automated processes.
• Reducing Costs: Completing a transaction on Ripple is designed to be highly affordable. At the time of writing, the network transaction fee listed on the official website was $0.00001 to $0.00006. Compare this with the typical method used for international transfers, SWIFT. It can easily cost 5 to 50 euros for an international transfer using that system.
• Reducing Costs Associated with Currency Conversions: In addition to offering low transaction fees overall, XRP also helps reduce the costs associated with currency conversions, especially between two that cannot be directly converted. In those cases, it is common for banks to convert to USD before converting to the target currency since USD pairs are readily available. However, this is costly and requires paying two conversion fees, one to get from the first currency to USD and the other to get from USD to the second currency.
• Lowering Energy Consumption: One of the common criticisms of some cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, is their high energy consumption. XRP resolves this by being eco-friendly and settling transactions instantly without mining or proof of work’s energy costs.
• Ensuring Liquidity: XRP also aims to overcome the challenges associated with a lack of liquidity in transactions. This way, it hopes to offer an alternative to cash, which is the liquid asset typically used. That is especially important because of the difficulties with liquidity in cross-border transactions, as without enough liquidity, the transactions cannot occur quickly. XRP overcomes this with its on-demand liquidity.

What Is the Vision Behind XRP?

According to Ripple:

“Our vision is to enable the world to move value like information moves today – the Internet of Value.”

Overall, the vision of XRP is to provide a system that allows people to complete instant, secure, low-cost, and scalable transactions, including across borders.

What Makes XRP Special Compared to Other Coins?

The most important thing that makes XRP different than other coins is the goal behind its creation. Bitcoin, for example, was created to let people easily pay for goods and services, appealing to individuals. By contrast, Ripple (and XRP) was created for payment networks and banks, offering them an improved system for currency exchanges, money transfers, and payment settlements. These benefits directly help banks and indirectly benefit consumers.

That use also means that instead of being used as a currency like Bitcoin, XRP is used as a way to exchange currencies with each other.

• No Blockchain: One of the biggest differences between XRP and other cryptocurrencies is that it does not have a blockchain or rely on mining. Instead, it relies on independent servers or nodes that constantly compare transaction records. While cryptocurrencies with a blockchain have a single distributed ledger on that blockchain, XRP has a new ledger created every second.
• All XRP Are in Existence: Many of the most popular cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, allow for the creation of new tokens via mining. By contrast, no more XRP will ever be created, with a total of 100 billion tokens pre-mined. Ripple Labs holds the majority of these and can periodically release them, using an escrow account with a fixed release schedule to reduce concerns.
• Very Quick Transactions: XRP succeeded in its goal of creating fast transactions. While Bitcoin confirmations take an average of 10 minutes (in the best conditions) and sometimes hours, XRP confirmations only take 3 to 5 seconds.
• Low Energy Consumption: XRP also has much lower energy consumption than Bitcoin. Experts estimate that Bitcoin uses about 250 kWH of energy per transaction, while XRP uses minimal energy. Research from Stockholm University and Stanford confirmed that running a Ripple server uses about as much energy as running one for email, which is minimal.
• XRP’s Use as a Currency Is a Side-effect of Its Usefulness, Not the Goal: With Bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies, the goal is to provide a virtual currency that allows for payments. This was not the primary goal with XRP, but some places have begun accepting it.

According to the official website:

“XRP is a digital asset built for payments. It is the native digital asset on the XRP Ledger – an open-source, permission-less and decentralized blockchain technology that can settle transactions in 3-5 seconds.”

You can send XRP directly, like you would with other cryptocurrencies, so there is no intermediary required. When you use the Ripple Network to send money, the network essentially converts the two initial currencies (or cryptocurrencies) into that of the destination using XRP.

How the XRP Ledger Works

Participants in the global XRP community maintain the XRP Ledger. These participants run independent validator nodes that work together to agree on the validity and order of XRP transactions, which is called a consensus. Once a consensus is reached, it is irreversible. Every 3 to 5 seconds, the ledger reaches a consensus on all of the outstanding transactions and issues a new ledger. Validators can be anyone, and current validators include financial institutions, exchanges, and universities.

Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm

Ripple contrasts sharply with the other major cryptocurrencies because it does not have a blockchain, instead of relying on the XRP Ledger and the Ripple protocol consensus algorithm. This is patented technology and requires full agreement by all of the nodes.

To help limit wasted time and ensure accuracy and security, this consensus process occurs in several rounds. The validator nodes will compare transactions in a candidate list to the other interactions from other validators. Only proposals that more than 50% of the connected nodes agree on go to more validator nodes. This then repeats with the cutoff at 60%, 70%, and 80% agreement. This method helps prevent double-spending.

XRP Supply

Ripple methodically sells XRP and has an escrow reserve of it. These actions help incentivize the activity of market makers, helping the liquidity of XRP as well as its markets’ overall health. The escrow contained 55 billion XRP and is designed to help reduce concerns regarding the supply. This does so by letting people mathematically confirm how much XRP can be in the market. Essentially, locking up XRP in escrow ensures that the market will not be flooded with XRP, which would hurt its value.

The escrow began with 55 billion XRP, divided into 55 contracts with 1 billion XRP each. One contract expires on the first day of each month, slowly increasing the amount of XRP available in the market. As of Aug. 30, 2020, there were 48.8 billion XRP in escrow.

Those interested in the volume of XRP traded can view the relevant information in real-time at XRP Charts. The following image gives you a glimpse of the figures as of the middle of September 2020.

On-Demand Liquidity

One of the technologies behind XRP is On-Demand Liquidity, which lets customers of RippleNet use the token to connect two currencies in just three seconds. This is an alternative to the standard practice of holding pre-funded accounts, which is what most businesses accepting international payments must do.

Open-source

The XRP Ledger and XRP rely on open-source technology that any developers can choose to build on, with information available on a dedicated website. Few beginners will take advantage of this, but it results in more platforms and tools being created that involve XRP.

XRP was designed to have very low transaction fees, as this is one of the features that help make it an appealing alternative to other transaction methods. The fees tend to hover around hundredths or thousandths of a cent (in USD). You can view the current fees on the Ripple website by scrolling down to “XRP Metrics.”

The minimum commission for a transaction is just a thousandth of a cent ($0.00001). The only reason Ripple included a transaction fee is to stop DDoS attacks.

As mentioned, one of the goals of Ripple is to increase transaction speed, which the network successfully does. The settlement speed of XRP typically stays between 3 and 5 seconds. Remember that the network regularly maintains throughput of 1,500 transactions per second. You can view a live settlement speed on the XRP website under the heading of “XRP Metrics.”

You can also visit the Market Performance page of the website to view this information and the transaction speed. The following image shows the relevant figures at the time of writing in September 2020.

XRP is highly scalable. It regularly takes care of 1,500 transactions a second. It has proven that it can handle the same number of transactions per second as Visa, having dealt with more than 65,000 transactions per second in July 2019.

XRP Cannot Be Duplicated, Falsified, or Created: One of the features of XRP that helps ensure its security is that mathematical algorithms power it. No organization or person is in control of XRP, which means it cannot be duplicated, falsified, or created.

Security Via Minor Fees

The use of XRP in the Ripple network was designed to enhance the overall security of Ripple. This comes from the small transaction commission. As mentioned, the fee only exists to stop DDoS attacks. Those would work by spamming the network via excessive transactions, but doing so would result in spending too much XRP to be profitable. At the same time, the transaction fees are small enough at fractions of cents for even those who trade high volumes of XRP to not spend more than several cents.

Reserve System

The Ripple network also has a reserve system in place, meaning that actions that use network resources require a minimum quantity of coins. Since the reserves are under a dollar, most users will not notice them. Yet, overloading the network via a DDoS or similar attack would be too costly.

Lawsuit and Controversy

While XRP overall has a good reputation, there has been some controversy. In May 2018, there was a class-action lawsuit filed,

“Alleging that it led a scheme to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through unregistered sales of its XRP tokens. Creating billions of coins 'out of thin air' and then profited by selling them to the public in what is essentially a never-ending initial coin offering.”

The lawsuit essentially alleged that via the never-ending ICO, Ripple violated laws regarding securities. This lawsuit still has not been resolved and after much back and forth, it was not until February 2020 that a judge ruled the lawsuit could continue. Part of the judge’s ruling was highly favorable for Ripple, including the following statement:

“While defendants did acknowledge various 2013 offers and sales in their May 2015 settlement with the USAO (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California), the sales activity identified in that settlement does not show that defendants targeted the general public when offering to sell XRP.”

Ripple is decentralized as anyone can become a validator node on the network. Those validators work together to reach a consensus, thereby maintaining the network. Currently, there are 36 validator nodes, and Ripple does run six of them, but this is only 16%, far from a controlling interest. Other validators include exchanges, financial institutions, and universities.

For further decentralization, there are more than 150 validators around the world, including on every inhabited continent.

In many of its applications, the team behind Ripple is involved in decisions but never has the controlling interest. In addition to the example of providing six of 36 validator nodes, Ripple is just one part of the advisory team that creates the Rulebook behind RippleNet. Other members of this RippleNet Committee include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, MUFG Bank, Santander, RBC, Standard Chartered, and Westpac.

The key to remember is that Ripple does not own or control XRP or the XRP Ledger. As such, even if Ripple has some control of the technology as a whole, it does not have any such direct control over the token. Even so, this is more control than some decentralization purists would prefer. That is particularly true given that Ripple Labs owns about 60% of the XRP tokens.

At the same time, the fact that Ripple Labs began as an official organization that works with banks and functions as a company helps it in the eyes of regulators.

Trust

The main issue most people in the cryptocurrency space have with centralization is the trust that is required, specifically trust in whatever company or individual is in control. Ripple has a solid reputation and to further increase trust, the Ripple protocol is open-source.

Ripple claims that centralization is not an issue and CEO Brad Garlinghouse even said:

“Ripple is not centralized. To be clear, if Ripple disappeared today, XRP would continue to function. To me, that’s the most important measure of whether something is decentralized.”

Ripple has a similar statement on an FAQ article:

“This is a top misconception with the XRP Ledger. Centralization implies that a single entity controls the Ledger. While Ripple contributes to the open-source code of the XRP Ledger, we don’t own, control, or administer the XRP Ledger. The XRP Ledger is decentralized. If Ripple ceased to exist, the XRP Ledger would continue to exist.”

Even so, most people in the cryptocurrency space do not agree with these statements and consider XRP to be centralized, or at least mostly centralized. The most common point made in this respect is that Ripple owns the majority of XRP.

Uses

The main use case of XRP is to make transactions more scalable, affordable, and quicker. The XRP Ledger, along with XRP, is part of payment innovation. The token is a key element of Ripple, which builds technology to improve XRP’s utility and help change global payments.

International Transactions and Currency Exchange

While XRP can be used for any transaction, the prime use case of Ripple is to offer currency exchanges and international transactions at a lower cost and higher speed, all of which is done via XRP. As mentioned, transaction fees are extremely low, and the average transaction time is 3 to 5 seconds.

Offering a Payment Ecosystem

Ripple and XRP also allow users to create their own currencies as a way to offer cheap, quick transactions. For example, collectors of a particular item could create a currency they would use for buying and selling.

RippleNet

RippleNet is one of the most important use cases for XRP. Customers of RippleNet can use XRP for liquidity in international transactions, offering an alternative to pre-funding. By using XRP for that cross-border liquidity, customers get instant settlement and lower exchange fees, allowing them to use their working capital more efficiently.

RippleNet is a network of more than 300 financial institutions around the world that helps allow transactions between the member institutions at a lower cost and quicker speed. RippleNet describes itself as being everywhere, reliable, instant, and low-cost. The reliability comes from visibility and the lack of payment failure.

Essentially, RippleNet provides a single connection that provides access to blockchain-based global payments, On-Demand Liquidity instead of pre-funding, operational consistency, and the ability to make payouts in more than 40 currencies. The RippleNet Rulebook ensures consistency thanks to payment rules, functional standards, and governance led by an advisory committee.

Xpring

Xpring is an open developer platform from Ripple for money.

“Let developers leverage XRP and its underlying technology in use cases from micropayments to e-commerce to exchanges and peer-to-peer services.”

Xpring Platform offers tools, programs, and services for developers, all of which help them incorporate money into their apps. It involves three primary protocols:

1. XRP Ledger for real-time settlement and payments,
2. PayID for payment addresses that are universal, and I
3. nterledger for interoperable payments.

One of the primary purposes of Xpring is to make it easier for developers to incorporate payments into their apps, including custody, sending, receiving, spending, and getting paid. It is also geared towards media, specifically letting developers create business models where content creators receive direct payment. Finally, Xpring is marketed at gaming, letting developers create a system that allows for the creation, owning, and exchanging of virtual goods in games.

Cross-border Payments

A primary function of XRP is its usefulness in cross-border payments, where it overcomes barriers like liquidity, transaction speed, and cost. Because of its hopeful role in cross-border payments, Ripple joined the ISO 20022 Standards Body, becoming the first member of the body that has a focus on Distributed Ledger Technology. The ISO 20022 will be the new global standard used for cross-border payments.

Projects and Partnerships

RippleNet Members

One of the many partnerships that include companies and organizations using XRP is RippleNet. As mentioned, there are more than 300 financial institutions that participate, showing the size of adoption. Some of the companies that “run on Ripple” include:

Other XRP customers include the names below. You can read case studies about some of these companies to see how they use Ripple such as Coinone Transfer, goLance, MercuryFX, MoneyMatch, MoneyNetint, REMITR, Sentbe, TransferGo, and Xendpay

Community

Ripple’s community includes more businesses than individuals, especially when compared to other cryptocurrencies. This comes from the fact that it was designed to appeal to companies engaged in frequent international transfers. As of the time of writing, there were 879 nodes, showing a sizable amount of support for Ripple.

Additionally, a community of developers uses Xpring from XRP to create their own programs. Xpring does have a forum, including a community category, but it is not very active. However, there are other forums that the developers in the XRP community use, including Xrp Chat and XRP Community. Both are active, especially the latter.

Wallets

Remember that the goal behind XRP is to facilitate transactions on Ripple. As such, there is no official XRP wallet. However, Ripple is popular, meaning that XRP is as well. This has led to many crypto wallets supporting XRP. Some mobile wallets include Abra Wallet, Atomic Wallet, and Toast Wallet!, while desktop and web wallets include Rippex, Atomic Wallet, Exarpy, CoinPayments, and Cryptonator. Ledger Nano S also supports XRP for those who want a hardware wallet.

In comparison to FIAT there are many reasons to appreciate XRP:

• XRP Is Stable: Since its establishment in 2012, XRP has shown stability, including closing all ledgers without any issues since the beginning of Ripple. It also has negligible energy consumption and world-class engineers dedicated to maintaining that stability.
• XRP Can Revolutionize International Transactions and Currency Exchange: Because XRP can be exchanged for any valuable and offers quick, low-cost transactions, it has the potential to disrupt the current methods for international transactions and currency exchanges. As the number of banks working with Ripple increases, so will the value of XRP.
• Low Transaction Fees: The incredibly low transaction fees associated with using Ripple and XRP are also a strong point in favor of the network.
• Quick Transactions: The fact that RippleNet completes transactions in 3 to 5 seconds is another often-cited reason that people praise Ripple. Adoption: Ripple’s growing adoption, including more than 300 clients using RippleNet is also an argument in favor of the protocol and XRP. Supporters argue that this number is continuously growing. As it does, XRP will increase in usefulness and, therefore, value.

As a true cryptocurrency many find XRP falls short of the vision of currency that is independent of governements and corporations:

• Highly Centralized: One of the most common complaints regarding XRP is that it is highly centralized, mainly due to the heavy involvement of Ripple Labs and the fact that XRP’s success relies on that of Ripple. The most frequently cited point in regards to Ripple’s centralization is that Ripple Labs owns about 60% of the total XRP.
• Focuses on Large Companies: Some critics also dislike the way that Ripple focuses on offering a solution to large corporations instead of individuals. They argue that this focus means that the average person is unlikely to notice an improvement in the cost or speed of their transactions anytime soon.
• Plenty of Competition: Others argue that there is a lot of competition in the field of international payment transfers, citing Stellar (XLM) as a cryptocurrency with a similar goal. This argument extends to the fact that XRP also competes with the industry standard of SWIFT payments, which is a preferred and well-established system.

In conclusion:

• Ripple was created to offer low-cost, quick, and scalable international transactions, something which there is definitely a need for, especially given the ever-increasing globalization. The only downside of the purpose/vision is that it benefits companies more than individuals.
• Ripple is still growing. More than 300 big-name clients already use RippleNet, putting it well on the path to adoption.
• XRP has negligible transaction fees as they are just hundredths or thousandths of a cent, being small enough that even very large transactions only cost pennies.
• XRP is significantly faster than most other cryptocurrencies, with transactions completing in just 3 to 5 seconds. While this is still not instant, it is quick enough for most people and uses.
• XRP regularly has 1,500 transactions per second, hundreds of times the amount of Bitcoin. It can also scale up to Visa’s throughput, but it has only reached more than 65,000 transactions per second once, not consistently.
• XRP has plenty of security measures in place and prevents double-spending. However, there has been some controversy regarding its ICO, including a pending class-action lawsuit.
• Because XRP relies on the success of Ripple, which is a highly centralized company, the token as a whole is more centralized than many cryptocurrency enthusiasts prefer. At the very least, Ripple does not control the majority of the nodes used for consensus on the XRP Ledger. The team that created Ripple and XRP has a strong track record, as does Ripple Labs, which is in charge. Even so, many cryptocurrency enthusiasts would prefer a project that is decentralized and does not have a team in charge.
• XRP offers a solution to a problem affecting our globalized world – high-cost and slow international transactions, and does so successfully. But, it is highly centralized, which is frowned upon in the crypto community.

Is XRP Safe?

XRP should be safe as it is well-respected and a key part of Ripple, a project with a growing customer base. You should just be aware that the project is not decentralized, and Ripple Labs holds the majority of XRP. This is somewhat mitigated by most of those tokens being in escrow. For added security, the XRP Ledger is open-source to offer transparency.

How Can You Store XRP Safely?

You can store XRP safely just like you would any other cryptocurrency. It can be stored on exchanges or wallets, and the safest option is to store it in a wallet. The safest wallets are offline ones, whether hardware or paper, while online wallets, including desktop and mobile ones, provide convenient access. To maximize safety, only store the amount of XRP you need accessible on exchanges or in online wallets and store the rest in offline wallets.

Will XRP’s Price Go Up?

There is no way to accurately predict the future, but industry experts anticipate that XRP’s price will increase. This would be a natural consequence of the growing adoption of RippleNet since the project’s growth will increase the utility of, and therefore demand for XRP.

What Is the Difference Between XRP and Ripple?

Ripple is the technology company that offers solutions for sending money via its RippleNet payment network, and XRP is an independent digital asset used to facilitate those financial transactions.

When Was XRP Started?

The Ripple protocol was already a working prototype in 2004, but it did not make major history for years to come. XRP began Ripple in 2012 when the company was formed to create the “Internet of Value.” From there, SBI Ripple Asia was formed to help with commercial blockchain use in Korea and Japan. For many experts, the true journey of Ripple started in 2013, with Ripple Labs gaining investors.

Who Was Involved in the Creation of XRP?

Jeb McCaleb came up with the idea of Ripple, and David Schwartz and Arthur Britto built it. From there, they invited Ryan Fugger to work with them. The idea behind Ripple has always been to offer secure payment options via a worldwide network. Fugger had previously developed OpenCoin, which eventually transformed into Ripple. Ripple’s initial release was in 2012.

Who were the early investors in Ripple?

Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, Vast Ventures, Pantera Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, FF Angel LLC, and Andreessen Horowitz as angel investors in April 2013 – providing a total of $2.5 million, followed by IDG Capital Partners and Google Ventures as angel investors in May 2013 – providing a total of $3 million . IDG Capital Partners, Camp One Ventures, Venture51, and Core Innovation Capital as seed investors in November 2013 – providing a total of $3.5 million There were further investment rounds, including raising $28 million in May 2015, $4 million in October 2015, and $55 million in September 2016.