Steemit Crypto Academy | Season 2: Altcoins – Part1 "Looking beyond the Bitcoin"

Ripple is an American company that was founded with the aim of providing a more efficient way of cross-border payments in the financial industry, particularly in the banking sector. This goal is done by eliminating middlemen to reduce costs and transaction times.

The payment service network Ripple xRapid uses XRP, a cryptocurrency that works on the XRP ledger. XRP serves to facilitate transactions on the Ripple network. The terms Ripple and XRP are often considered the same thing, but technically, Ripple is a payment platform and XRP is a digital asset that works independently of Ripple. XRP acts as a bridge between the various fiat currencies transferred on the Ripple network. XRP also acts as a source of liquidity for the network.

Ripple first appeared in 2004 under the name RipplePay. Its aim is to provide safe and fast financial transactions worldwide at a much lower cost than current payment networks such as SWIFT.

Initially, RipplePay only served to help individuals extend lines of credit to friends and family. RipplePay also allows traditional online payments and online currency payments. In 2012, a technology company called RippleLabs took over RipplePay and restructured its protocol. This new system includes digital money system features with the release of their new cryptocurrency, XRP.

This event took effect in early 2011, when Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb, and David Schwartz teamed up to create the XRP ledger (XRP Ledger). This XRP Ledger is the blockchain on which the XRP token resides.

XRP is an independent digital currency that is not owned or controlled by any person or entity. This is a cryptocurrency that is open source and can be used by anyone, including Ripple. The XRP ledger (XRP Ledger) is community-based, which means that only the user can decide whether to succeed or fail.

If I'm not mistaken around August 2012, Chris Larsen joined the XRP team, and after that, they persuaded Ryan Fugger to use their digital currency to their credit network, Ripple. Fugger agreed to support this new effort, and the team founded a new company known as OpenCoin, with complete control over what was previously known as RipplePay.

Bitcoin was developed as a decentralized digital currency to pay for goods and services. On the other hand, Ripple was created for banks and payment networks as settlement, money transfer systems, and currency exchanges.

XRP's main goal is to create a real-time direct asset transfer system that offers a cheaper, more transparent and secure alternative to current payment transfer methods, such as SWIFT. XRP is well known for this function on the Ripple network, which is why XRP is also known as Ripple.

The Bitcoin network is managed by a group of developers (developers) spread all over the world. All of these developers contribute to the Bitcoin network on a voluntary basis. Bitcoin is decentralized - meaning Bitcoin is not regulated by any bank, government or entity. Bitcoin was also created under a pseudonym or a group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto.

XRP Ledger itself works using a unique consensus algorithm with a network of servers that is tasked with validating transactions, not using "proof of work" or "proof of ownership". The transaction process is also faster. XRP transaction confirmation takes an average of 5 seconds; much faster than the transaction speeds of other cryptocurrencies or traditional financial networks.

Unlike most coins like Bitcoin, XRP is not designed to be mined at all. With Bitcoin, miners get a reward (reward) in the form of Bitcoin. Meanwhile, a total of 100 billion XRP tokens have been mined on the Ripple system, of which 38 billion tokens are available to the general public. The remaining number of XRP tokens is held by Ripple Labs and released periodically.