Hello guys and gals!
Today we'll start off by discerning a major confusing factor in Ripple - at least for some of us.
Let's make a distinction between Ripple the transaction protocol - which is used between banks and other businesses - and the ripple issued currency, XRP.
When you see Ripple making gains its actually the XRP, the currency that is issued by Ripple, that is increasing in value.
And this is actually quite different from the network protocol or Ripple protocol. Both share the same name and I’m sure this has certainly confused a lot of us.
Ripple Protocol
Protocol vs. Currency
The transaction network known as Ripple - the Ripple Protocol - is based on technology that’s similar to blockchain but not completely the same. It doesn’t require any mining and its based on a consensus network instead of being consumer-designed, like Bitcoin.
Ripple is exclusively used by big institutions such as banks and the whole idea of Ripple is to allow banks to transfer any sort of asset, be it currency, USD, Euro or physical assets like gold.
Using the Ripple protocol, you can transfer those assets between other institutions near instantaneously -something that rivals systems such as Swift.
So if you ever bought Bitcoin with bank transfer you will know how painful that is - imagine waiting up to 3 days to get your Bitcoin!
You have to contact your bank and send the transaction to a swift bank code account and this might take up to three days and there's a lot of transaction fees involved for both the sender and the receiver - curse these damned fees.
Ripple is set to revolutionize these sort of transfers by providing near instantaneous, sub-second transactions for institutions such as banks. It’s already been adopted by quite a few big banks - Like Santander and ATB Financial.
XRP – Currency of the Ripple Network
So now that we covered what is the Ripple transaction protocol, let’s move on to Ripple XRP.
This is a form of cryptocurrency that can be traded and is not “mined”.
XRP is actually issued by Ripple Labs , the company behind Ripple - which makes for a finite number of XRP.
XRP by itself has no underlying related assets or values - Its not tied to currency like USD or assets like gold.
Rather, it can be used to act as an intermediate currency in institutions.
It has one huge advantage in that transaction fees are very low, especially when compared to Bitcoin, since XRP was conceived to make asset transfers faster and cheaper.
Now this covers the good part of this post!
"XRP sounds pretty swell... Is that why it's booming so much?"
Well, call us conspiracy theorists, but we believe that there is something more than meets the eye with XRP - something that might go unnoticed to most investors that just want cryptocurrencies to "moon".
You see, we have considered that there is a reason behind the recent marketcap of XRP reaching $70b USD.
Which is...
centralization.
Well, centralization is all we have seen the years prior the surge of cryptos - ever heard of Governments or Banks?
This isn't necessarily a bad thing . Centralization helps with organization and has a lot of contributions.
But doesn't it feel strange to you, that just as when decentralization, transparecy and cutting out the middleman starts popping up here and there on the World Wide Web , there is an organization that is trying to centralize something that by definition should be in the hands of common folks?
While we are not against making massiv profits, paying due taxes and a degree of centralization, we think it is ominous that banks are pushing so hard for a centralized currency.
And this thought covers pretty much the bad part of this post.
But this is not all guys and gals... here comes
The Ugly
You see, because we keep researching and accompanying cryptocurrency - as much as we can - we sometimes get the opportunity to see the other side of the coin.
Bear with our theory here - but let's assuming our line of thought is correct.
Do you know what everyone is pouring into XRP? ETH and BTC.
And we all know now that Banks are working with Ripple and hold a lot of XRP.
What this implies is a reversing of the massive wealth transfer
Bear with our theory here - but let's assume for the sake of discussion that our line of thought is correct.
Banks, knowing that they cannot shut down ETH and BTC, intend to get as much of it as possible.
What do they plan to do? Help develop XRP. Hold it, artificially manipulating the price by bidding it up, $2, $3...
When most of us are aware of the price rising, the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) will make us pour our limited and decentralised Ethereum and Bitcoin into a cryptocurrency that Banks control and can issue more.
This is when John Mcafee's prediction will occur. BTC will head to the million USD he claimed, with ETH following suit at 300.000 to 500.000 per coin.
And banks will be holding most of it, while we will be left with XRP valued at the price they see fit.
So even if we started ahead with Bitcoin and Ethereum and other decentralized cryptocurrencies, the banks will end up with more money than us.
And to end this controversial theory, there is something a good a friend of ours once said that resonates with us, as we write these words.
"The only way to make money in a Casino... Is when you own one.
We're all out of juice for today, as as always we will try to keep you up to speed with information, even if sometimes we can't be too objective!
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