Economists have claimed that Bitcoin is just the beginning of the cryptocurrency boom. If you went all-in after seeing Sheldon get hyped on Bitcoin on Big Bang Theory, maybe it’s time for you to expand your horizons and invest in a cryptocurrency you believe will succeed. Ripple is a great place to start, and it’s different enough from Bitcoin that it could break through the uncertainty held by big banks. In fact, many major financial institutions have already gotten on board with Ripple, and many will follow.
Ripple is like Bitcoin’s younger sister who went to business school: She’s corporate-minded, forging her own space in the crypto world, and everything she talks about sounds legit. According to Coinmarketcap.com, Ripple is the fourth-ranked cryptocurrency in the world, with a market cap of $29 billion.
What is Ripple?
Ripple is the name of both the cryptocurrency (symbol: XRP), and an open payment network in which the currency is transferred. Ripple’s system aims to enable people to break free of the “walled gardens” that financial networks create with fee structures, currency exchanges, and processing delays. Bitcoin also aims to do this with blockchain technology, but Ripple takes it a step further and uses completely different tech.
This decidedly less-centralized, less-cyberpunk attitude is what has made Ripple so popular with investors and large companies. Early investors included Pantera Capital, Google Ventures, IDG Capital Partners, and Santander InnoVentures.
For a more detailed explanation of how Ripple’s technology works, Coindesk has broken it down by comparing the system to an ancient Arabic banking method called “hawala.” Without getting in too deep, if I want to send money to my friend Jane, I log into my preferred Ripple gateway or site, deposit money into it, and instruct the site to release funds to Jane via her preferred gateway. Jane collects her funds.
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