Ripple is both a digital currency (XRP) and a payment network and infrastructure. As such, Ripple offers users a real time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance system. Let’s look at the key facts about Ripple in numbers.
2012
The main goal of Ripple initially was to provide access to a system that is free of what they term “walled gardens” – the bureaucracy of the current system of financial transactions and networks, such as processing fees and delayed transactions. Ripple began early development as far back as 2004 – however the first version of the new payment protocol, that allows instant and direct transfer of money between two parties came in 2012.
Since launch the currency has had a positive reception. Ripple has been set up to act as a complement to Bitcoin rather than a competitor – creating a shared investor base. Furthermore, the benefits of the technology have been noticed by the banking and financial industry. Banking institutions are now researching and implementing changes to incorporate Ripple technology into their own systems. The Ripple protocol offers benefits such as anti-spam measures, fraud protections and instant transactions, amongst others.
100 Billion
Ripples aim was to create 100 billion ripples – of these half are to be placed into circulation and half are to be held within company ownership. The current number in circulating supply is 38,343,841,883 XRP while the total number in supply is currently 99,994,523,265 XRP.
Of the 100 billion initially created, 20 billion XRP were kept by the currency creators, who also founded Ripple Labs. The remaining 80% of the total number of Ripples was given to Ripple Labs. Ripple Labs works with the aim of facilitating the use of the currency – through incentivizing market maker activity, increasing XRP liquidity and strengthening the health of XRP markets.
Ripple Labs works on distribution strategies to help meet the companies long term aims for the digital currency. In May of this year, facing mounting concerns surrounding XRP supply, Ripple committed to place 55 billion XRP (88% of its XRP holdings) into a cryptographically secured escrow that will be distributed gradually and sold systematically into free circulation.
$0.181116
The ripple digital currency is trading at 0.1811USD per ripple as of August 11th 2017. The price of each Ripple is orders of magnitude smaller than each Bitcoin – with 1 ripple most recently trading at 0.00005604BTC.
The peak of Ripple value came in May of this year when the value spiked over 200percent in a matter of days to 0.414 USD per Ripple. The price has drifted somewhat lower since this time but has retained a moderate amounts of the gains achieved that week.
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/
$7 Billion
Ripple is the third largest digital currency by market capitalization – with a value approaching $7 billion as August 11th 2017. Currently Bitcoin holds the top spot at USD 57.78 billon and Ethereum is at number 2 with a market cap of 27.99USD billion.
The growing popularity and practicality of the Ripple digital currency and network protocol indicates there will be further growth and wider adoption globally over the short to medium term at least.
Sources:
- https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/
- https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/20/the-20-largest-cryptocurrencies-by-market-cap.aspx
- https://ripple.com/category/insights/news/
