Jeremy Moran
Ripple has been one of the top performing cryptocurrencies last year, soaring astronomically at 35,500 percent. And since it’s a relatively new player in the cryptocurrency industry, it isn’t really well understood by many people.
Therefore, it is important that any aspiring cryptocurrency investor get introduced to the facts that surround this cryptocurrency. In this article, we list down some of the most interesting facts about Ripple that will be useful for you if you plan on trading it.
Fact 1: Ripple is NOT its name.
People and traders usually refer to this currency as Ripple. It’s catchy and easier to remember, indeed. That’s the reason why many people use it interchangeably with its real name. The cryptocurrency is officially called XRP.
With that in mind, you might be wondering why bitcoin isn’t generally capitalized unlike other cryptocurrencies like Ripple and Stellar, among others. That reason is because the word “bitcoin” isn’t the name of the company.
XRP tokens are created by Ripple Lab, and the company’s name pretty much stuck to the digital currency.
Fact 2: Ripple offers 3 Products
Another interesting fact that may surprise even the owners of Ripple is that the company’s flagship product, xCurrent, doesn’t really utilize the XRP cryptocurrency. No, not at all.
xCurrent is built to allow banks to transact with one another, and to offer compatibility between any currencies, not just digital currencies. As a matter of fact, this is the product used in the well-known tie-up between American Express and Santander.
The product that trades XRP via the xCurrent system is called xRapid, which is not yet widely used in markets. xRapid, on the other hand, supposedly has several key advantages like making transactions faster and opening up new markets.
Fact 3: You can’t mind Ripple
Bitcoin’s circulating supply slowly increases because of a process called mining, in which users pool their computing power to process transactions in exchanges for newly minted blocks of tokens. Many other huge cryptocurrencies also grow their supply through mining.
However, Ripple is quite different. All 100 billion XRP that will ever be created are already in place, though not all are in circulation yet.
Fact 4: Only about 40 percent of XRP tokens are circulation
Even if there are 100 billion XRP tokens in existence, the larger slice of them are not in circulation yet. Ripple Labs own about 60 billion XRP, 6.25 billion of which are directly owned and 55 billion of which are in escrow account dedicated for future distribution.
Over the next few years, 1 billion XRP will be available per month for distribution. So, the circulating supply could increase drastically in the coming years.
Based on the present XPR price of just under $0,80m, the total value of XRP in circulation is $31.52 billion, making it the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap. On the other hand, the combined value of all XRP in existence is near $80 billion.
Fact 5: XRP’s network is faster than bitcoin’s or Ethereum’s
The average bitcoin transaction usually takes around 81 minutes, and has typically been in the range of 10 to 30 minutes during the recent months. Ethereum transactions are very much faster but typically still consume two minutes or more.
