There is now a third company challenging the top two players in the cryptocurrency world and it is called Ripple. The digital currency start-up based out of San Francisco had an astonishing first half of 2017 when the value soared by an astonishing 3,977%. The up-and-coming digital currency recorded an impressive $11.06 billion worth of transactions in the second quarter of 2017 as 25 new exchanges listed its token, upping its total to 30 exchanges.
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Ripple claims that their XRP currency (AKA ripples) is “the fastest and most scalable digital asset,” and their payments settle in 4 seconds compared to 2+ minutes on Ethereum and 1+ hours on Bitcoin. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinhouse stated that his company has a processing speed of around 70,000 transactions per second compared to Bitcoin’s capacity of approximately seven transactions per second. One Ripple token is currently valued at just below 20 cents, it started the year at the fractional value 0.0065. While the value has jumped up to nearly 4,000% in the first half of the year, XRP fell back a bit in July, but it is still up nearly 3,000% for the year. As transaction volumes have increased, so has the value of the upstart cryptocurrency.
“With respect to XRP, we are incredibly focused on international payments, I think we are probably the only digital asset that has a clear use case with respect to what we are trying to do with the asset,” said Miguel Vias, Ripple’s head of XRP markets.
Ripple has a total value of $7.6 billion, making it the third-largest market capitalization in the space, behind Bitcoin ($44.8 billion) and Ethereum ($21 billion). XRP tokens differ from Bitcoin and Ethereum because most of them are owned by the Ripple network and they can’t be mined. Despite the worrisome volatility, Vias is optimistic about the five-year-old company as well as the future for cryptocurrency as a whole.
“What we have seen is an embracing of digital assets broadly by really established institutions. When you have folks like the [Bank of England], which did a [proof of concept] with us, as well as the Bank of Japan coming out and saying, we are considering this as legal tender at some point — when you see those developments, you can’t help but feel that we are on the right path, that interest is going to continue to grow,” Vias said.