Ripple is the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap. It is run by a company, so it has an overlord; this is a good and bad thing.
Basically, Ripple is focused on the market of forex and it has partnered with several major global institutions. The major, major advantage to Ripple, as I understand it, is the speed at which transactions can happen and be confirmed; it’s seconds. This is in contrast to Bitcoin, whose blocks take ~10 mins on average.
Also, Ripple doesn’t depend on energy-intensive mining process. Instead it distributes XRP tokens at its discretion in order to incentivize certain behaviors.
“We will engage in distribution strategies that we expect will result in a stable and strengthening XRP exchange rate against other currencies. To this end, we currently plan to distribute XRP primarily through business development deals, incentives to liquidity providers who offer tighter spreads for payments, and selling XRP to institutional buyers interested in investing in XRP.”
Overlord can be good, but can be bad as well. Do we trust in this “Central Banker”?
Here is a recent chart of Ripple’s XRP courtesy of https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/ripple
I’ll be watching the transaction volume over the next few weeks. If traffic continues to be steadily increasing, then it will definitely be worth a flyer.
It seems to be a good strategy to just put a small amount of money into these cryptocurrencies early and just sit on them. I’m pretty sure ONE of them will emerge as a HUGE HUGE winner. This is playing the VC game…
Here’s how one would buy Ripple XRP (in US): https://ripple.com/xrp-portal/how-to-buy-xrp/