Ripple is dominating

You’ve heard the news. Ripple has the 2nd highest market cap out of all cryptocurrencies — a whopping $128 billion USD. A valuation higher than Uber, Airbnb, and Slack combined with $20 billion left over in pocket change. Ripple was the best performing cryptocurrency of 2017, with a staggering 36,000% increase from the beginning of the year!

Things have certainly been going well for Ripple. And to some it’s no surprise. They’ve been killing it for years. From 2012–2016, Ripple raised $93.6 million from Andreessen Horowitz, GV (Google Ventures), and many more of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley. These are the kinds of the firms that routinely invest in startups like Facebook, Slack, and Uber when they’re starting up. Them backing Ripple means they believe in the mission and they believe in the team.

And Ripple is everywhere online. Successful pilot programs, working with 100+ financial institutions, and even the Japanese government seems to be behind them.

Everything is perfect.

A textbook case of a company with innovative technology that’s taking the market by storm.

And this would be true, if it wasn’t for some of the finer details that have HUGE IMPLICATIONS.

1. XRP is not Ripple

When people hear Ripple they instantly think of their coin XRP. This makes sense since other communities and coins are one and the same. When you buy ETH you are betting on Ethereum and when you buy BTC you’re betting on Bitcoin. Why would Ripple be any different?

Well, this is where things become interesting. To understand the differences between XRP and Ripple, first we need to examine Ripple the company.

Ripple was founded in 2012 as Opencoin, renamed to Ripple in 2015, and is currently based in San Francisco, California. They have more than 150 employees, a nice office, and they sell banking software that uses blockchain.

What does Ripple do? They have 3 products — xCurrent, xRapid, and xVia.

• xCurrent
  is their flagship product. It gives banks the ability to efficiently move money across borders. It uses RippleNet, the Ripple blockchain, but does NOT use XRP. Banks like this software because it allows them to save money and time when sending payments, without introducing much risk or changes to their workflow.

• xRapid
  helps banks improve liquidity when trading in emerging markets. It is the only Ripple product that does use XRP. Banks like it because it helps them free up mountains of money they’re stuck sitting on, but dislike it because it introduces unknowns — such as the volatility of XRP.

• xVia
  is still in development and scheduled to come out in early 2018. It’s similar to xCurrent, but allows entities besides banks (such as corporations and payment providers) to send money through banks. xVia also does NOT use XRP.

Remember that impressive 100+ list of financial institutions Ripple is working with? Guess what, they are all using xCurrent. And xCurrent does not use XRP. Of the 100+ partnerships Ripple has, ONLY ONE actually uses XRP the cryptocurrency. There is just one small “non bank financial institution” from Mexico called Cuallix that is using xRapid.

This means that the headlines showcasing Ripple’s partnerships with more and more banks are good — Ripple the company is succeeding — but also don’t mean much for XRP gaining adoption.

Now this isn’t to say that banks will never adopt xRapid (and start using XRP). In fact, this has been a part of the Ripple business plan from the very beginning. Get banks using xCurrent and then cross-sell them into xRapid. Banks may come to love xRapid.

Or they might not.

For Ripple this difference doesn’t matter much. For investors in XRP, this is the difference that makes or breaks their investment.

2. XRP is not the currency of the future ...

continue to read: https://hackernoon.com/4-alarming-reasons-ripple-might-not-be-what-you-think-9debc3c86985