The rise of Ripple - another attack from the Banks?

So far Ripple has illustrated a remarkable growth and climbed to the second place on Coinmarketcap. At the time or writing this article Ripple’s market cap is already 56% of Bitcoin’s market cap, and it is still going to the moon.

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Ripple is older than Bitcoin being created in 2004 (Bitcoin in 2009) but never went anywhere. It is therefore important to note that even if Ripple is based on a Distributed Ledger concept, it is not a Blockchain.

Ripple has one function, and that is to move money. For this reason, it is an easy favoured for banks and financial institutes to enter the “cryptocurrency” world (according to me Ripple is not a Cryptocurrency, but is only using the name to piggy-back on it).

Ripple’s cryptocurrency has been adopted by banks and other financial institutions. Those companies believe Ripple’s system offers both better prices and is more secure than other digital currencies, including Bitcoin. It allows users to send, receive, and hold any currency in a decentralised way via the Ripple network. The company is cash-flow positive and holds a vast store of XRP, which it periodically releases into the market. (Fortune Magazine)

Taking that the banks are accepting Ripple as a viable solution to money transfers, it can be a method to replace the SWIFT network.

Since XRP could feasibly replace SWIFT as a payment system due to its lower cost and higher speed, SWIFT figures can be used as an estimate. SWIFT handles about $5trn each day. Therefore, in an extreme case, there could be 100 billion XRP supporting 5 trillion worth of transactions. Since XRP is effectively a bridge currency that acts as a carrier of value from A to B, this would place one XRP coin at 50 dollars. This is, of course, an unrealistic and extreme example (Ripple’s market cap would be $5trn – Apple currently has the highest US market cap at $730bn). (The Market Mogul)

This projection may not necessarily come true as there are a lot of potential roadblocks. The biggest one might be another payment system which offers an even more attractive alternative. Government regulation like China’s ban on ICOs and Russia creating a “CryptoRuble” can trigger others to followed suit and banned the use of currencies such as XRP by their financial institutions. Then, of course, banks can develop their cryptocurrencies for interbank transactions.

Ripple can be a fair investment, but in my opinion, it is not something that I will touch. All the shouting that Bitcoin is a bubble, Ripple is the nearest to this bubble you can get. My reason is that Ripple does not carry any of the intrinsic value that Bitcoin carries. Through Bitcoin’s short lifetime many attacks were launched in the form of “the end of Bitcoin, articles), “bubble articles” and well-known bankers (think Jamie Dimon) educating investors that Bitcoin is a bubble. All these assaults had no longterm effect on the rise of Bitcoin.

In my opinion, we now see the latest attack. By selecting a “cryptocurrency” which can be controlled by banks and financial institutes and which does not need to mined by decentralised nodes (the bulk of the coins are held by a central company who can decide to increase the amount without anyone holding them accountable - yes I know they put the amount in a trust and promised not to do it). By pouring money into this currency, banks and financial institutes can drive it to have a higher market capitalisation and thereby attempt to make it the dominant “cryptocurrency”. With this position, they get a certain control of the crypto market and can manipulate the prices.

So far Bitcoin illustrated its robustness. We need to see if the need which Bitcoin fulfils in the market is strong enough to counter this attack.