Dear Reader,
Today on Ninelives we are exploring the Ripple payment protocol, and it's token XRP. Why 9 lives? Because I'm a cat and cats are said to have 9 lives due to our amazing ability to survive, just like Ripple. Ripple exploded onto the scene last December and briefly overtook Ethereum as the second most valuable cryptocurrency, it's still number 3 so lets find out why.
Ripple ≠XRP: Ripple is the payment network and XRP is a digital currency. Ripple uses and controls XRP but Ripple doesn't have to use XRP. I use my hooman for food but I don't have to use them for food and can be fed by someone else.
Partnerships: Ripple has more partners than a male Alpha cat. The list of partnerships is into the triple digits and many of it's users include major banks. For a full list see https://ripple.com/
Chris Larsen: He co-founded Ripple along with Jed McCaleb who later left to found Stellar Both are cryptocurrency celebrities with powerful resumes and the company has other expert programmers which make it stand out.
Ripple is for Banks: Banks have money and send it around. Ripple is aiming to replace the SWIFT system banks use to transfer money which is much more expensive and extremely slow compared to Ripple.
Ripple was OpenCoin: It dates back to 2012 and is old as far as cryptocurrencies are concerned, the name changed in 2015. Ripple is evolving continuously and if XRP became useless, Ripple could still be a powerful company because of it's technologies.
Ripple is Centralized: If you haven't figured that out yet, it is very important to note. Most other cryptocurrencies are decentralized, and open sourced. Some people don't like Ripple because it is controlled by a private company. Cats like freedom, no one owns me and we are decentralized creatures.
XRP is fast: it only takes 4 seconds to send XRP from one wallet to another and the price is a fraction of a penny. The network can handle about 1500 transactions per second and this is likely to improve.
100 billion: There are one-hundred billion XRP tokens in existence, more than half are held in escrow by Ripple and will supposedly be released at about 1 billion a month for the next few years until it's all in circulation. This supply worries me as XRP will multiply like stray cats; no one will know what will happen to the price of XRP until after it reaches the maximum supply.
xCurrent, xRapid and xVia: These are the names of Ripples transaction systems. xCurrent doesn't even use XRP, it uses XRP Ledger. This is worrying as Ripple doesn't push XRP onto it's clients and other currencies may be cheaper and/or better for xRapid and xVia systems eventually.
Thank you for taking the time to read the 9 lives of Ripple. If you think XRP is an excellent investment or one that should be avoided, please let us know why. If you feel like something important was missed, let us know too. Also, if there is any other coin you want me to cover, please comment below.
In no way is this intended to be financial advice, I do not recommend you purchase XRP or Ripple. Please do your own research. I have never owned XRP and I don't plan on investing in it, I also am not an equity holder in Ripple.
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Bye for Meow 😺 mRrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
