Ripple (XRP) is dumb, Ripple is dead, Ripple is pointless. I never really understood the popularity or bullish outlook for Ripple. What it reminded of, mostly, was a micro-cap biotech stock – a manipulated, hyped, fan-boy pushed piece of nothing. I mean, let’s leave the fact that the supply was questionable and that the question of whether it was a security or not was questionable let’s start with how dumb Ripple is.
How dumb Ripple is/was
The main fanboy push of this horrible, horrible cryptocurrency was the desire to replace the SWIFT system. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is probably one of the most powerful and most important organizations and pieces of technology that exists. In a nutshell, it is responsible for handling the great majority of messages between banks in the world (transfers, orders, etc – but they don’t actually clear or settle). They’re huge, massive and important.
And Ripple thought it would or could replace that system.
Not only that, Ripple and it’s proponents actually thought that an organization like SWIFT, along with all the world’s banks, would just go with some new 3rd party. Really. It’s ridiculous. First, there is no way that was going to happen. Second, there is no way that was ever going to happen. Third, they are/will to create their own blockchain token to settle – not some random startup.
Why Ripple is dead
Ripple’s only big gamble (and that’s what Ripple was) was somehow becoming this magical solution to a financial network that doesn’t have a problem. The big competitor to Ripple, Stellar (XLM) is now and has been lightyears ahead of Ripple. XLM has always focused on being a global settlement alternative and has targeted large and small businesses. Hell, Stellar has had a partnership with IBM – which brings me to the point that Ripple is dead. IBM has been developing a new payment network using Stellar’s blockchain and just today they announced that 6 international banks have signed up to use this service over XLM’s network. The thing is, Stellar isn’t limited to just this one amazing piece of news, Stellar has the Stellar Exchange which has uses outside of just the business and banking world. Which brings us to why Ripple is now pointless.
Ripple is now pointless
Yes, there are some things Ripple is doing that sound great – but they are competing against a fairly thick field of competitors. Ripple has Xpring – focusing on startups and entrepreneurs to utilize the XRP Ledger and currency. There’s Coil headed up by a former Ripple exec which is focusing on getting large companies to use XRP as a payment. And there’s xRapid, Ripple’s payment clearing/settlement service for banks, payment providers and other exchanges. Notice anything about all of these things? They’re in a big space full of competitors – and Ripple does none of these things very well. And let’s just get to the nitty gritty here: money is in the banks and money is in the settlement of payments. Ripple and Stellar have ZERO name recognition. But IBM does. And who did IBM go to build their new service on? Stellar Lumens.