Ripple(XRP)

XRP is one of the earliest cryptocurrencies, launched in 2012 with the collective efforts of Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen, Arthur Britto, David Schwartz and Ryan Fugger. While the names XRP and Ripple are often used interchangeably, they are not the same.

Ripple is the business that operates in the cross-border transactions space while XRP is an open-source digital asset running on the XRP Ledger. The company, Ripple, has a suite of different products (e.g. RippleNet) for large banking institutions and similar entities, and it uses XRP for some of those solutions.

XRP was launched as a faster, cheaper and much more scalable alternative to BTC. According to official accounts, XRP transactions settle in around 4 seconds and the network can consistently handle over 1,500 transactions per second.

Some of the prominent Ripple team members today are CEO Brad Garlinghouse and XRP co-founder David Schwartz, who continues to serve as the CTO.

XRP price

Given the speculation around Ripple’s partnerships with large banks and its use cases, XRP price has seen significant surges in the past. The first notable increase in XRP price came in 2013 when between August and December, XRP/USD went up by more than 2,000% (from around $0.003 to over $0.06).

The next big rise in XRP price came in 2017 when, according to our XRP live price chart,  it went from under $0.01 at the start of the year to over $3.30 in the first week of 2018. This rise of roughly 55,000% was unprecedented, even in the crypto space, and took XRP’s fully diluted valuation to over $330 billion.

After that, the price of XRP continued to drop in the bear market and fell below $0.12 in March of 2020 as the pandemic resulted in a market-wide crash. This drop was, however, short-lived, as the crypto market recovered a year later and the price of XRP touched $2 by April 2021 — an increase of nearly 1,400%.

Since then, XRP has managed to stay above $0.50, and despite being unable to cross its all-time high from January 2018, it continues to rank among the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

How XRP works

For users, XRP is similar to BTC and can be sent between wallet addresses as a form of payment based on XRP/USD price quotes at the time. However, while BTC was created to be a truly decentralized digital asset, XRP was launched to make global payment settlement faster and cheaper. To achieve that goal, XRP makes compromises on the decentralization front in exchange for speed.

Unlike BTC and most other cryptocurrencies, XRP does not use decentralized consensus mechanisms such as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. Instead, XRP relies on a permissioned validator node network that verifies and approves all transactions. 

Unlike BTC miners or validators on other networks, XRP validators are entities trusted by Ripple and are not rewarded for their role in maintaining network accuracy and preventing issues such as double-spending. According to official accounts, there are currently 36 validators for the XRP Ledger, 6 of which are managed by Ripple. 

Finally, given how the entire supply of XRP — 100 billion XRP — was premined prior to launch and is periodically released by Ripple, both the company and the cryptocurrency are often criticized for their overly corporate nature in a space lauded for its pursuit of decentralization.

XRP news, updates and highlights

Most of the positive XRP price action has come at the heels of news around big partnerships with financial services providers and banks. However, in December 2020 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an action against Ripple and two executives — co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse — alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion by selling unregistered securities.

The SECs charges saw XRP price dropping more than 50% in a week, and the ongoing lawsuit saw XRP being delisted from popular exchanges such as Coinbase, Okcoin and Crypto.com.

With the case still ongoing, XRP investors and supporters await a decision that could set precedent for other cryptocurrency projects and pave the path for future regulations.

Frequently asked questions about XRP

• Can you mine or stake XRP?

No, XRP cannot be mined or stake. The XRP Ledger is maintained by a group of trusted validators and the entire supply of XRP has already been premined.

• What are some of the best XRP wallets?

Wallets for XRP have typically been hard to find, but today you can store XRP in Trust Wallet or on hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger among other options.

• What can you do with XRP?

If you have XRP, you can use it for fast and cheap transactions or trade it against other popular cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, USDT and more.

• How to buy XRP?

You can buy XRP by exchanging your BTC, ETH or USDT holdings on an exchange such as HitBTC or buy it directly with a credit card on NEXO.