First of all before you decide to invest in Ripple or any other cryptocurrency for that matter make sure you do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose.
I have done my personal research on Ripple and here is what I have managed to gather about this cryptocurrency.
Ripple enables almost instant cross border, international money transfers, Ripple’s main target market are banks which will hold large amounts of XRP to transact almost instantly with each other.
Even though Banks are the main target for Ripple everyday people like you and me can use Ripple for money remittance purposes, for example I can send $200 to someone on the other side of the world and it would reach them in less than 10 seconds and cost me less than 1 cent.
Now compare that to a SWIFT bank transfer that can cost me anywhere from $20-$60 and take 1-3 business days (business days don’t include weekends).
Benefits of Ripple I have seen:
Ripple has really fast transaction times, a transaction currently takes about 4 seconds to be processed.
Ripple has really cheap transaction fees which are currently under a penny at $0.004 per transaction (less than 1/2 a cent).
Ripple is also partnered with over 100 banks which include the Bank of America, UBS, Standard Chartered, Barclays, JP Morgan, Santander and American Express.
Ripple’s blockchain adds transparency and additional security to transactions by adding each transaction to a public ledger which cannot be altered or changed.
Since XRP transactions are peer-to-peer there is no central point of failure.
Why Ripple could grow immensely in the next upcoming years:
Ripple is currently the 3rd most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and over the course of 2017 the value of Ripple’s XRP rose over 35,000% which means it’s growth outdid both Bitcoin and Ethereum for that year, on top of that Ripple is already working with over 100 different banks including Barclays, JP Morgan and Bank of America.
Ripple aims to make sending and receiving money through banks anywhere in the world near instant and at a very low cost, this will be done using their cryptocurrency XRP. The main entities that will benefit from this will be banks (yes I know a lot of crypto people hate banks but we cannot be closed minded, banks will be here to stay for a while).
Ripple will save banks a lot of money in terms of fees (XRP transaction fees are currently less than a cent) and since transactions only take a few seconds this means a lot more transactions can take place.
Ripple’s public ledger also adds an additional security layer to transactions since the ledger is built on Ripple’s own blockchain which cannot be tampered with or changed in any way. This alongside civilian peer-to-peer transactions create a lot of potential for Ripple in the future.
Ripple has also gained recognition from cash enabled cryptocurrency exchanges, the European exchange BitPanda for example has already added Ripple to their platform and there have even been rumours about Coinbase adding Ripple in the future.
Final Thoughts:
If Ripple can continue to add more banks to it’s roster and increase the ease of access to XRP for the everyday person then I see the future looking good for Ripple, the technology is good and the people behind it are great as well, I cant wait to see how everything plays out.
If you want to invest in Ripple (XRP) you can buy it using cash from BitPanda if you live in Europe or buy it from Binance using Ethereum or Bitcoin from anywhere in the world.
You can also check out this guide that shows you to how buy some of the recent highest peforming cryptocurrencies including Ripple: How to buy Cardano, TRON, Stellar Lumens, Ripple, Nano/RaiBlocks and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies
I hope you found this post helpful, feel free to check out these useful resources below:
Keep your cryptocurrencies safe and secure with a Ledger hardware wallet.
Buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash and Dash from BitPanda if you live anywhere in Europe.
Buy Bitcoin and Ethereum from anywhere in the world using CEX or Coinmama.
Get your favourite cryptocurrencies/altcoins from Binance cryptocurrency exchange. (Note: You need BTC or ETH to buy altcoins).