The love/hate relationship with Ripple (XRP).
Today I came across this tweet:
It got me thinking about Ripple again. Ripple is one of the blockchain/crypto companies that have caught my eye since I started doing my research. When you start investigating Ripple it really feels like they have it. They are the only ones working with banks instead of against them and they can move any kind of currency extremely fast, the idea seems amazing. They are working with over 60 organizations already. How can XRP not go to the moon?
But if you decide to investigate more at some point you’ll find out that Ripple and their cryptocurrency XRP are basically two different things and even Ripple cannot explain XRP well.
The tweet prompts us to watch a YouTube video if we want to understand how Ripple works. It's a good looking short video and it does a great job explaining how Ripple works, but notice that once again (as with many of their communication) they hardly mention or touch upon their XRP cryptocurrency.
I've noticed many people asking if Ripple will go the moon and I remembered a few comments I posted on several different posts. Here are some of those (re-edited) comments:
"Ripple and XRP are two completely different things. Ripple is a consulting company and they consult with banks and other organizations. They want to move digital currency from point A to point B. When doing so they give XRP almost for free to those banks so they can use it for transport on their platform. XRP as we know it is the currency that we can buy, but why would we buy it? I don't think that Ripple wants the price to move up a lot... remember that's why they have millions of XRP in escrow so when the price goes to high they can and will dump XRP into the market effectively lowering the price again."
“Ripple is trying to become the only partner all banks need... and banks, well they are heavily regulated and tend to think about maximizing profits. Having a third party means you're paying fees somewhere in the chain. They normally want to have the infrastructure and software solutions in their own hands. While Ripple is claiming to work with over 60 banks/organizations now we don't know what they are doing for those companies... there is still not a clear sign that they will become the new middleman, and thus successfully killing of Swift for example.”
“The Netherlands and the EU are working on their own Ripple-like system and they want to run a pilot somewhere in 2018. Deadline for mass implementation is set on 2019 and in 2019 all Dutch payments will have to be fully executed within 5 seconds. So why did they not choose Ripple because it seems that it is exactly what Ripple can do and wants to do? That's the big question. Maybe they don't like or fully understand what XRP has to do with it, maybe they don't like the fees, maybe they don't want to rely on a third party…”
As stated I hope that XRP will grow exponentially because I have invested in it, but i’m not as sure as I am sure for example about Stratis (see: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@valderrama/stratis-will-beat-ethereum-in-2018).
But as always, no one is all-knowing so I’m very interested in reading your takes/opinions/insights on the Ripple/XRP matter. Please comment down below.
I can definitely relate to the frustration the Xrp can cause. AS you said initial research makes it sound incredible. But when the community dives further the truth comes out.
The only hope I believe is that all the new comers to crypto stock up heavy on Xrp and slowly bring it up that way. Then they will do more research and join the club of wondering why it does not perform.
Very informative post
Yeah nice. I have about $20 in XRP. I hate myself for having it.
But if Ripple's services are more widely used (NAB in Australia has signed up for example), won't this also increase demand for and therefore the price of Ripple's transport vehicle XRP?
Just a thought
You got me thinking the elite own this s want to make sure they re keeping their profits from the banking industry and now the newer crypto industry. Shit lol
Who knows... but this could definitely be a scenario...
I wrote a post the other day about it. I'm still pretty new in the crypto space, and a lot of it's edited from a Facebook post, aimed largely at people who know nothing about it, so it might sound a little naive to some of the elders here, but maybe offers another perspective that doesn't seem to be getting discussed enough.
https://steemit.com/crypto/@cmaccu/30th-september-crypto-move-ripple-what-else
I found my way into this indirectly through researching smartphones for my PhD research, and when I saw the numbers of people coming online in the "developing" world, which is something like 83% of the world's population, then I started to realise how much bigger the coming shifts are going to be than many people realise. It's been between a fifth and a quarter of a billion people connecting to the internet for the first time each year for the past decade, mostly with phones. Many don't even have power to their homes.
We're already seeing people in deprived regions starting to use Bitcoin — with their phones — and the use of Bitcoin in Venezuela (weirdly often mined using an MMORPG), it's clear that ultimately a lot of growth will be driven by that kind of usage, among potentially huge numbers of people. Billions of people live in Africa and Asia, and huge numbers of them don't have any kind of bank account. So it's needed more there than anywhere.
My point is really that, just like the internet spent the bulk of its first two decades dominated by the 17% (less then) in the "developed" world, in our own little bubble, at the moment the crypto-sphere is mostly dominated by people who are deeply involved and enthusiastic and can understand the complexities of it, because this is whole thing is so complicated, which is the moment a major barrier to entering the space.
One of the downsides to that I think is that people might forget that for it to really go mainstream, people need to be able to buy a loaf of bread for the same price it was yesterday, and not have the money they're using drop by $1000 overnight and make it cost twice as much. At the moment the only one that comes close to that is XRP. I think Ripple is probably intending it that way, because that stability is crucial, but I also think the prices is lower than it's worth and will end up at the moment because people are seeing it as 'the evil banks' or something.
So personally I just can't see how it won't keep growing as more people realise this and get over their ideological rejection of it. You can hate fiat currency too if you like, but you still need to use it every day. It might not spike as quickly as hugely as the others do, but that's a good thing, and it will actually work in its favour long term.