Hello Steemit community, as I told you in my introduceyourself, I would be starting something this week to try to help or contribute somehow to the community. Here it comes.  

Introduction

  For those that are pending with what is going on in the crypto currency space even for curiosity in the new technologies based on blockchain, because you have some investments in some crypto coins or only because it is the trending topic and we like to be up to date, maybe you have heard about Ripple a company that created its own cryptocurrency this is the XRP. What Ripples attempts to offer are more efficient cross world payments, basically very fast payment processing in a matter of seconds from one place to the world to another. All this with a very cheap cost per transactions. This is very significant for entities like banks due to they have hundreds of thousands of transactions in daily basis.

  Regarding Alibaba, in case you are not aware it is an online store that is very strong in the Chinese market, the most remarkable about Alibaba is that enable people to easily get stuff from China to very competitive cost. Now that you already get some background let’s start talking about the main topic in this article.

Why help from Alibaba can be so important for Ripple?

  Alibaba is a Company very recognized and founded with a high client volume. Now 66% of the people that is surfing on the web is making online shopping, an average of 1000 million of people make some kind of only shopping. Now let’s think how much do you think Alibaba is selling? It is true it is big, but, it is really the big deal as they say? Between 2015 and 2016 Alibaba sold more volume than even Walmart who has been the number one retail seller multiple times at global level.  

  Only to give you some vision the Alibaba’s sells were from more than 478,600 millions and for sure all these transactions has to be done through a payment method. We as consumer used to use PayPal, Debit Cards, Credit Cards and their associated apps.

  Imagine all this almost 500,000 million were processed by using XRP currency. The utilization of the currency itself for someone with such good reputation as Alibaba it will increase the credibility and reliability in Ripple Company so that everyone will want to invest in Ripple and as a result its currency the XRP will increase its value.

Let’s get in details how ripple can get benefit from this kind of help:

1. Reliability increase. - As I mentioned before the fact that someone with a global level reputation as Alibaba supports Ripple it will increase the reliability in the industry and this will directly increase good expectations making more investors to look for the company and technology behind it. All this will increase the value of the XRP currency. 
2. Incrase on XRP demand.- The Ripple’s technology can implement XRP its currency as gas, the gas in general way it is what is going to cost to process the transaction, we can say Ripple network will charge you certain amount of XRP every time you make a transactions. This means If Alibaba uses as pay method XRP based technologies, people or entities from three parties will require XRP in regular basis to process payments. Imagine all this people that is shopping through Alibaba requiring XRP to process payments, this for sure will increase the demand of having XRP and increase on demand means increase on price when there is lack of offer. 
3. Limited number of coins.- The XRP is designed to have a limited coin stock, in some point the coin mining will stop and the offer will reduce this with an increase on the demand by XRP based technologies will increase the XRP value. 

  That is why with all this context we can realize the huge impact it can be to get some support from a Company as Alibaba. However this has not ended let’s keep talking my friends.  

  In case you want to read the information regarding Alibaba you can go to this link: https://economia.elpais.com/economia/2016/04/06/actualidad/1459948613_715656.html  

But… How do we know Alibaba pretends to help Ripple in first place?

  All this comes from XRP Chat, where people that closely follows the Company and cryptocurrency share information about personal opinions, predictions, comments and visions in this kind of foro from time to time official Ripple company staff goes and share some official information.  

  This rumor as it is classified in internet comes from a thread in this foro (XRP Chat) where some users were discussing about they saw information that lead to believe a Ripple server or peer (Ripple infrastructure terminology) was running  under Alibaba registered address.  

  Below an image that has been shared multiple times in internet about the explained above: 

  Basically from here is where all the rumors and speculations came due to Alibaba has what seems to be Ripple infrastructure what allow to think in all the described scenarios we discussed if Alibaba helps Ripple.  

I remember it is supposed this was fake, isn’t it?

  On the other hand it exist another new in internet where Emi Yoshikawa Ripple’s Director gave some comments about it to CoinDesk. In this article it is said the Ripple’s Director confirms that Ripple as company is interested to expand to the Chinese market.  

  However what is more remarkable is the new’s title it says “Ripple Confirms China Expansion Plans, Shoots Down Alibaba Rumor”.

So… What did they say about the rumor?

  Within the article only exists a very ambiguous part where CoinDesk says they asked Yoshikawa about this rumor and the Ripple’s Director said: "Alibaba (the company) is not running a validator."  

  Which CoinDesk sells in its new as a rumor shut down, however the good XRP Chat users didn’t let this pass and started to argue very good valid points about this declaration.  

  Basically what it says is, a validator is different than a peer or Ripple server in its infrastructure, we all knew already that Alibaba didn’t have a validator he only said what we all already knew but he didn’t answer the question.  

Below the source article links:

 https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-confirms-china-expansion-plans-shoots-alibaba-rumor/ https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/8457-ripple-confirms-china-expansion-plans-shoots-down-alibaba-rumor/  

Conclusion

  From my very personal perspective and I let this to your criteria:  

• We are still in an ambiguous state where we cant truly say Alibaba pretend or not helps Ripple. There were not any official direct statement from Ripple or Alibaba that answer this.
• If it is true that this image about the peer exist the one make a connection with Alibaba, this can or can’t be real and if it is a peer never implies direct support from Alibaba to Ripple.
• The question asked by CoinDesk as well as the answer given by the Ripple’s Director Yoshikawa was useless since it didn’t offer any clarification to the rumor.
• If you want to invest in XRP cryptocurrency you can go ahead, however I invite you to do a complete and extensive research about the technology behind it and its foundations so you can do your investment totally aware on where are you putting your money. If it is true a rumor can give you a very competitive advantage to get profit it is also true you can get exactly the opposite result and lost part or your total investment. Remember the #1 Rule in investments. - Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.  

  Thanks to all community for your time if you read this, I will do my best to contribute with something else in the near future. 

  Let’s help each other!