What is Ripple? Here’s a ridiculously easy beginner’s guide on Ripple(XRP)

Published in

Bitfolio

7 min readJul 24, 2018

Third largest cryptocurrency, yet worth pennies. We’re talking about Ripple(XRP) cryptocurrency, which like Ethereum even Ripple is more than just a cryptocurrency. If you are looking for information on Ripple and want to get started with cryptocurrency, you are in the right place.

If you are an absolute beginner, you might find the cryptocurrency starter guide helpful.

Note: In case you don’t already know anything about Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, we recommend you to first refer the above-mentioned guides and then come back here for further reads.

In this post, we will share with you everything you need to know about Ripple. Both as a blockchain network and cryptocurrency.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

As part of this post, you will be learning the following:

What is Ripple?
Who’s behind Ripple(XRP)
Difference between Ripple and XRP
Frequently asked questions
Final thoughts

What is Ripple?

Since the Bitcoin era, there have been over 1600 cryptocurrencies and token trying to cope up with the reputation Bitcoin has in the cryptosphere. In spite of a lot of inabilities, Bitcoin is still the king of the space.

One such cryptocurrency that is third largest cryptocurrency (in terms of volume) is Ripple(XRP). Ripple is a technology company that powers a lot of financial institutions to process payment for their customers across the globe. The efficiency with which Ripple handles the payment system is really well. Just enough for those financial institutes to totally rely on Ripple for their payment-related processes for years to come.

You might not know already, Ripple is considered as cryptocurrency though it’s functioning is a lot more different than the typical blockchain technology implementing cryptocurrency.

If you are wanting to invest in Ripple, research well. It is more than you think

Ripple is nothing but a cryptocurrency platform that facilitates payment processing for many financial bodies. Just like Ethereum is a platform for the cryptocurrency ‘Ether’(ETC). However, Ripple’s ecosystem is not as vast as Ethereum’s.

Ripple uses blockchain technology to ensure the network is publically accessible and distributed ledger takes care of the privacy and security. One of the best things XRP has is the speed. Unlike Bitcoin and even Ethereum, it takes incredibly less time for the transactions to get confirmed.

As you can see, Bitcoin takes 10 minutes for confirm 1 transaction, Ethereum takes 2 minutes and XRP reached its destination in just 4 seconds. We already know and have experienced the time it takes fora traditional system to process the payment. Especially when the transfer is across international borders, it takes even weeks for the recipient to receive the funds.

Speed is a really good point that is keeping XRP above many high price cryptocurrencies.

Ripple Labs, owns the blockchain and the network, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum where the network and blockchain is owned bya group of developers.

Talking of market cap, Ripple launched 100 billion XRP right out of the box. This means, there is nothing called mining in case of XRP. Furthermore, 60% of this number is held by the Ripple Labs itself and the remaining 40% is in circulation in the market for investors and users. Technically, Ripple has around 30 billion worth XRP which they can use of fund any acquisitions or projects of future. However, this will affect the value of cryptocurrency drastically which the company wouldn’t want and hence they’re not planning anything of this sort anytime soon.

One more interesting thing about Ripple is it’s business model. While other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and ETH are working hard to eliminate the centralized banking system and dominate the financial infrastructure with decentralized architecture. Ripple is working hard to leverage its technology and power the traditional financial bodies to make faster payments. Furthermore, Ripple also has XRP as the cryptocurrency entity of the platform. XRP is a concept of decentralized architecture but Ripple Labs has implemented it in its centralized architecture.

Ripple is the opposite of blockchain trend in almost every sense, yet ranks third(as per coinmarketcap)

Advantage for Ripple over others — Who’s behind Ripple(XRP)

One of the biggest threats all cryptocurrencies have, including Bitcoin is the regulations. With the freedom of eliminating middlemen and absolute privacy, cryptocurrencies has its own problems. Many illegal activities are being carried out with cryptocurrency as a monetary exchange of the deal. Furthermore, the exchange platforms facilitating the cryptocurrency trade is a centralized system and is often attack and the funds are stolen worth billions.

However, XRP has nothing to worry about amidst all this, as it’s backed by some of the world’s most renowned financial brands. Santander, UBS, American Express, RBC, Westpac are just some of all the members that are backing Ripple as a cryptocurrency and a facilitator of their payment processing system.

On one side, traditional financial institutes are against the concept of blockchain as it’s a threat to their business. And on the other side, there’s Ripple who has a whole gang of big shots from the financial industry.

If you are intending to invest in Ripple and remain an investor, you probably have made a good choice. While Bitcoin and Ethereum have decentralized architecture, that is thousands of miners back the network and nobody actually owns it. Ripple, on the other hand, has no concept of miners. All the nodes are handled by the company itself, like other cryptocurrency it doesn’t depend on proof-of-work or SHA256 to approve transactions.

The XRP nodes verifies itself on the centralized server owned by Ripple Labs. This is pretty much how banks function. The only difference between traditional bank and Ripple is that, Ripple has its monetary token, XRP that it uses to send funds on it’s network. While banks rely on Ripple to process their traditional payments processes.

Difference between Ripple and XRP

Frequently Asked Questions

1) How to buy XRP?

You can buy XRP from Coinbase, Binance, GATE.io, CEX.io, Zebpay, Bitfinex, and 60 other markets with different currencies. Please note that these exchanges are the third party and each of them have their own policies. We do recommend these exchanges but exchanges are prone to attacks. Considering this fact either move your funds between various exchanges or have it in hardware wallets like Ledger Nano S or Trezor. There is zero chance or thefts in hardware wallets so you can completely rely on it.

2) I sent XRP via gateway/exchange and it hasn’t arrived yet. What should I do?

Exchange you have used to send XRP might have been facing heavy load and might take time to process. Ripple servers have nothing to do with this, it’s exchange’s servers that are lagging behind not the Ripple. You might need to get in touch with exchange support team for further assistance.

Double check the destination address also make sure that the recipient’s account is active. If you have the destination address rightly mentioned even then the funds have not received by the recipient, in that case, the exchange has a lot of work to do.

3) What to do in case of XRP theft?

Submit a theft report survey to the official Ripple help center.

4) What are the best digital wallets to store XRP?

So far, Ripple doesn’t have their own wallet so all you are left with is third party wallets. However, there are some third party digital wallets for XRP that we recommend but you are requested to check the digital wallets with your own due diligence before holding your money there. The best digital wallets for XRP are as follows:

Toast wallet: Open source and free wallet to store XRP. The wallet is available for Android, iOS, Windows & mac.
Exarpy: Non-hosted ripple wallet that is lightweight and accessible on any browser. The wallet charges 0.025 XRP per transaction excluding Ripple network fees. Read the FAQs before proceeding.
Gate.io: Gate.io is a fully functional exchange platform with a lot of cross currency markets. You can make use of mobile apps for easier transfers of XRP funds.
Binance: Another exchange platform that you can use to store the XRP tokens. One of the most trusted exchange platforms in recent times. However, we do not recommend keeping your funds in one exchange wallet for more than 2 days as the exchange may shut down anytime and you may lose money.

5) How to migrate Ripple trade account?

You can check this office help documentation for further assistance. This guide includes instructions on how to migrate Ripple trade account to another wallet provider.

6) What to do if Ripple trade password is lost?

In case you have the secret key but lost the password, you can find help in this official help document and follow the steps mentioned under the section “What if I do not want my identity information transferred to GateHub?”

Final thoughts on Ripple

If you are more of an investor then XRP has a really bright future. Even if Ripple Labs shuts down, XRP will continue to grow and make the financial payment system better and faster. Though Ripple Labs owns XRP, the two are differently individual entities. Hence the Ripple token, XRP becomes a really good asset to invest on.

XRP as a cryptocurrency and Ripple becoming the backbone of financial institutions, these two entities have a very long scope and is not going anywhere away from us.

Over to you. What do you think of this network and a perfect blend of centralization, decentralization, cryptocurrency and blockchain? Have you used Ripple as an investment and/or payment? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Originally published at http://bitfolio.org/what-is-ripple.