What do you think about the cryptocurrency Ripple? Is it wise to invest in it?

Ripple has overtaken Ethereum in market capitalization to become the second most valuable cryptocurrency.

The first major cryptocyrrency to be owned by a for-profit enterprise, Ripple saw a huge jump towards the end of 2017. The digital currency costs slightly over $2, making it more affordable than Bitcoin (about $15,000) and Ethereum (about $890). In 2017, Ripple rose about 36,000 percent.

Ripple’s market capitalization is over USD 102 billion, while Ethereum’s market capitalization is over $86 billion.

There are 5 major reasons which helped Ripple to rise so much and what convinces me that it would continue to go up.

1. Rise of the Altcoins- Now that Litecoin has hit its initial resistance barrier, the natural impact has been that motivated participants have sought new avenues for investment. This has precipitated wild growth among many different cryptocurrencies, including:RIPPLE(XRP), TRON (TRX), Cardano (ADA), Stellar (XLM), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), QTUM, Verge (XVG), and Reddcoin (RDD), among many others — bringing the overall cryptocurrency market cap to a record high of $611B.

2. Partnerships & Media -Ripple now has over 75 commercially deploying customers — and over 100 currently on their roster. But more than just establishing a customer base, Ripple has used strategic partnerships to generate buzz. For instance, the recently announced partnership with American Express was many Americans’ first encounter with Ripple — and immediately situated the brand as a reliable financial service, rather than a weird or intimidated new technology.

3. Asia-Asia plays a key role in this strategy. As Ken Rapoza pointed out, Asians are “going mad” for Ripple. This is not an unfounded claim; last year, Ripple partnered with SBI Holdings to launch SBI Ripple Asia to serve markets in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and ASEAN countries by establishing a dedicated sales and engineering group tasked with selling and installing solutions for cross-border bank payments.A lot of people are beginning to realize how big of an opportunity there is between business and the blockchain…and that’s making Ripple the early winner here.

4. Coinbase Rumors-The effect of this media boom is a major uptick in rumors that Coinbase will soon support XRP buying, selling, and trading on its platform. The widespread assumption is that if that occurs, a whole new crop of buyers will start investing in XRP.

5. XRP Functionality & Consumer Grasp- Positioned as a multi-pronged solution for major financial institutions, Ripple is actually a useful product to its customers — regardless of what it will or will not build in the future — and these customers happen to be some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. And it’s speed (4-second transactions) and low fees also make it appealing to general consumers.

This is also supported by how Ripple itself functions. XRP is a pre-mined coin, which has drawn criticism for going against the ethos of decentralization and the lack of mining opportunities that creates. Moreover, Ripple retains a full 20 percent of the total supply of XRP. While this too has upset some in the crypto community, it also somewhat immunizes it to the volatility we see in other coins. As Techno Rajji explains in an article written for Oracle Times last month:

“Due to this limited number of XRP coins, the currency may continue to flourish or at least hold its ground in the future if crypto prices fall.”

HOW TO BUY RIPPLE ?

To purchase RIPPLE coins, you need to have Ethereum, Bitcoins, or any other top altcoins. It is better to buy Bitcoins or Ethereum in the market and then you can easily use it in Binance to purchase IOTA crypto coins.

• The first thing you need to do is you need to buy Bitcoins from websites like CoinBase, ZebPay, BlockChain (UnoCoin). All these websites would ask you to verify your account with your real identity. So signup and immediately upload your verification documents. I personally use Coinbase as it is very easy to use and it is widely recognized wallet.
• Once you received your bitcoins, signup on Binance.com which is an Official crypto exchange website. This is one of the most popular websites for crypto trading. Click here to signup on Binance to buy RIPPLE cryptocurrency at the best price.
• Now go to the “Deposit Withdrawal” section and click on the Bitcoin (BTC). It will show you a unique BTC address. You need copy this and go back to your wallet where you bought bitcoins/etherium. Now, send an amount of BTC you would like to transfer to Binance.
• Once you have completed the transaction, Added BTC will show up in your Binance account within an hour. Yes, it takes some time to complete the transaction.
• Check your account after around an hour and you will see your BTC in your Binance account. Now click on the Exchange “Basic” and search for XRP/BTC exchange. There are hundreds of other cryptocurrencies also listed over there.
• Enter the amount of RIPPLE coins you want to purchase and it will show the total amount of BTC in the column below. Once you click on the Buy button, amount of RIPPLE will instantly get exchanged from your Bitcoins and you can check this on Funds –> Deposit Withdrawal option again to make sure you have received the RIPPLE coins.

Well, this was all from my side, hope you guys enjoyed reading this answer and have started thinking of investing in RIPPLE cryptocurrency. Share this article with your friends and if you any comments and suggestions feel free to write them in the comment section.

Cheers.