Ripple rides the waves in the cryptocurrency market

(December 21) The price of the Ripple XRP cyptocoin has breached the dollar level setting a new high of $1.06. Although many may not have heard of Ripple, it is now the third or fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Ripple, symbol XRP had been trading sideways for months but turned sharply upward a week or so ago as described in a recent Digital Journal article.

There is both a company called Ripple and a coin, payment protocol, and payment exchange network with the same name produced by the company.

Ripple the company

Ripple was originally named Opencoin. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in San Francisco California.

The company developed the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network.

For its creation and development of the ripple protocol (RTXP) and the payment exchange network the MIT Technology Review listed Ripple as one of the 50 Smartest Companies in its February 2014 issue.

Ripple the coin, payment protocol, and payment exchange

Ripple's Transaction Protocol (RTXP) is a real time gross settlement system (RTGS).

According to Wikipedia: "It is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native cryptocurrency called XRP (ripples). Released in 2012, Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly 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.

Ripple is already used by companies such as UniCredit, UBS, and Santander. Ripple is a protocol that banks are actually adopting using Ripple technology for settlements..

As of December 15th 2017 the market capitalization of Ripple (XRP) was 31 billion, the third largest cryptocurrency. According to the appended vidieo it is the fourth largest.

Ripple is complementary to rather than a competitor of bitcoin

While some may see RIpple as a competitor to bitcoin, Ripple considers itself a complementary service that could actually help bitcoin users. It even has an article introducing Ripple to bitcoin users.

The Ripple network allows the seamless transfer of any form of currency: dollars, euros, pounds, yen, bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.

Stephen Thomas, a senior developer for the Ripple protocol but also an advocate for bitcoin said:“Ripple will open up many more gateways for bitcoin users and easier ways to bridge bitcoin with the mainstream world of finance.”

Asians are diving into Ripple

A Forbes article discussing the Asian craze for Ripple gives a good short description of RIpple: " Ripple is like a Western Union using blockchain technology. It is a digital payment system that allows for discounts for its service for those who pay to use it in the Ripple coin. "

Previously published in Digital Journal