So why is Ripple great for Banking?

Ripple is a private, centralized, permission based Blockchain.  It is basically the opposite of bitcoin.  To really understand Ripple we need to first understand how information gets exchanged between countries.  For example, once you build your credit score in America, it won’t be accepted when you move to Korea.  There are different systems and rules that are applied in Korea.  Most of all they don’t take into account all the work that went into building your credit score in America.  Same goes for the financial industry.  In fact, it moves slower in the financial sector because of all the laws, rules, and regulations involved.

Replacing the SWIFT System

Banks use the SWIFT system when sending money from country to country.  When people do wire transfers, the SWIFT system is what is used.  However the SWIFT system is an old and outdated technology.  It is very expensive and takes 1-2 days to clear.  Money can be lost because of the exchange rates as well.  However with Ripple, there is a agreed upon protocol that would be real-time and cost virtually nothing.  Customers will be able to send money from country to country quickly and basically for free.

Why Korean Banks Can Benefit?

There are millions of Koreans that live outside of Korea and make money abroad.  Many find it hard to send money back to Korea.  How with Ripple customers will be able to send large amounts of money in and out of Korea.  Ripple will be an alternative to the old style of global transactions.  Through the protocol, the money can be monitored and follow each countries laws and regulations.

Why is Ripple not Free?

The reason why Ripple is not 100% free is that because if they made it free there will be a higher chance that people will spam the network.  So once it does a transaction a fraction of the ripple coin (XRP) gets destroyed increasing the value of Ripple.  Ripple can handle thousands of transactions per second and can handle the huge fluctuations in the network traffic.  The banking industries will hold 70% of the market share which will help in case of market crashes and make Ripple a really stable cryptocurrency moving forward.

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Ripple has been making a lot of waves with their marketing and partnerships.  South Korean bank Woori Bank has officially completed testing with cross-border payments with Ripple.  Early news is that the test was a huge success.  It was also announced that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse might be coming to South Korea later this month.  These are clear signs that Woori Bank will soon be adopting the Ripple system.

Ripple’s goal will be to incentive Woori Bank to eventually use the x-rapid program which will help with liquidity and settlements.  Ripple has been aggressive in getting banks to test their system using x-current or x-rapid protocols.  If the banks go with the x-current protocol, Ripple will introduce them to the x-rapid protocol.  Ripple has previously partnered with a Japanese bank consortium and the SBI Holdings group who have already finished their testing and are already working with Ripple.

Coinbase/Ripple Partnership?

The partnerships and the relationships Ripple are forming is slowly building up.  Furthermore, Ripple is close to being listed on Coinbase.  This is great news for Ripple (XRP) given that is already a top 3 crypto and the fact that there is so much demand for it.  There are already a lot of competitors coming into the market which is why it will be crucial for Ripple to be listed on Coinbase as soon as possible.  The price of Ripple should see a huge jump once this is done.  It could be as early as this week!

Getting listed on Coinbase will be huge for Ripple.  If Ripple wants to really break out this year they need a major exchange like Coinbase where it is easy to use, it is one of the major exchanges and people can take fiat currency and buy crypto directly.  Now people will not have to go buy bitcoin or ethereum and transfer it to another exchange.

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Top 10 Digital Currencies

10)  NEO – NEO

24 Hour Trade Volume:  23,994 BTC

NEO is a blockchain platform and digital cryptocurrency which helps in the development of digital assets and smart contracts.  Originating in China and launched in 2014 (funded by Da Hongfei), it currently supports 10,000 transactions per second.  The NEO network uses NEO tokens to make smart contracts.  NEO (commonly referred to as “Chinese Ethereum) supports many code bases such as VB.Net, F#, C#, Java, and Kotlin.  Since Ethereum has their own language, NEO is much easier to learn.  NEO is also working together with the Chinese and Japanese government as well as big corporations such as Alibaba.

9)  LiteCoin – LTC

24 Hour Trade Volume:  33,974 BTC

LiteCoin is a peer to peer cryptocurrency and open source software project by MIT.  Therefore no central authority manages LiteCoin.  The tech behind it is very similar to Bitcoin.  As a result, it is commonly called the “Little Brother of Bitcoin”.  In 2011 Charlie Lee formed LiteCoin to make transferring funds from one individual or business to another easier, without the use of banks.  LiteCoin is much faster than Bitcoin when it comes to transaction speeds.  LiteCoin also has more “Coins” than Bitcoin with 84 million.

8)  Bitcoin Cash – BCH

24 Hour Trade Volume:  36,840 BTC

Bitcoin Cash is the hard fork (community-activated upgrade) of Bitcoin.  In August of 2017, creating Bitcoin Cash resulted in a new blockchain.  The goal of Bitcoin Cash was to increase the number of transactions its ledger can process by increasing the block size limit to 8 MB (Megabytes).  Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is an upgraded version of the Bitcoin Core software.  With Bitcoin Cash payments are much faster and transactions much cheaper.  Therefore most Bitcoin Cash transactions cost pennies and take no longer than 10 minutes.  Furthermore pending transactions are cleared with each new block so it is used very similar to cash which is why it is called Bitcoin Cash.

7)  TRON – TRX

24 Hour Trade Volume:  41,162 BTC

The TRON Foundation from China formed TRON; a decentralized open-sourced cryptocurrency.  This is a place where content created can be compensated for sharing their content.  TRON accesses entertainment content from around the world without having to go through GooglePlay or the Apple Store, in a way decentralizing content sharing on the internet.  In addition, content producers can get funds directly from consumers.  TRON could challenge YouTube and Facebook in the future in regards to content.  The value of TRON is low because of its high volume (65 billion coins) and it will be a while before it holds any value.

6)  Cardano – ADA

24 Hour Trade Volume:  51,768 BTC

Cardano is a 3rd generation digital cryptocurrency and was launched in Hong Kong by Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), lead by the former CEO of Ethereum Charles Hoskinson.  The ADA cryptocurrency can be used to send and receive digital funds securely and quickly.  In addition, Cardano is also a technological platform that can be used to run financial applications for the public as well as companies and even the government.  This is the first blockchain project to be developed from a scientific philosophy by the leading academics and engineers.

5)  Qtum – QTUM, QTM

24 Hour Trade Volume:  69,962 BTC

Qtum is a blockchain technology and cryptocurrency that facilities major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.  They are also used to make smart contracts more secure and easy to use.  Qtum Foundation in Singapore formed Qtum.  Businesses use it to mainly build decentralized applications for mobile devices.  Furthermore, Qtum has the reliability of Bitcoin as well as the smart contract technology of Ethereum.  The main idea behind Qtum is to make smart contracts easier and more secure.  Also smart contracts that are built on Ethereum can be transported over to Qtum easily.

4)  Ethereum Ether – ETH

24 Hour Trade Volume:  182,986 BTC

Ethereum is an open-source, blockchain computing platform that features smart contract functionality.  It is basically a distributed ledger for state transitions.  It is also the blockchain network for Ether.  You can send Ether to accounts and use it to compensate participant nodes for computations performed.  Ethereum blockchain focuses on running the programming code of any decentralized application.  Instead of mining for bitcoin, miners in the Ethereum blockchain earn Ether tokens that fuel the network.  Ether pays transaction fees and services on the Ethereum network.

3)  Ripple – XRP

24 Hour Trade Volume:  183,597 BTC

Ripple is real-time currency exchange and remittance network.  Therefore, Ripple is based on a shared, public database or ledger, which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exchanges, and remittance in a distributed process.  Ripplepay released Ripple in 2012 as an interaction.  Like most blockchains it uses a common ledger that is managed by a network of independent servers that compare transaction records.  Ripplepay validates service to ensure integrity.  Those servers can belong to anyone.  The Ripple Protocol (XRP) directly transfers money between two parties.  It exchanges any form of currency from airline miles to even gold.

2)  EOS – EOS

24 Hour Trade Volume:  188,025 BTC

EOS Blockchain technology that is very similar to Ethereum.  It is looking to become a decentralized operating system that can support industrial-sized decentralized applications.  What makes EOS interesting is their claim to be able to remove transaction fees while at the same time do millions of transactions per second.  Therefore positioning itself as the most powerful infrastructure in existence for decentralized applications.  EOS wants to support thousands of commercial-scale DApps in the future while at the same time offering flexibility.    However, it is still in the very early stages of development so it is still unknown if they can back up what they claim.

1) Bitcoin – BTC, XBT

24 Hour Trade Volume:  547,474 BTC

Bitcoin is the leading cryptocurrency in the world.  It is the first decentralized digital currency and their payment system works without a central bank.  The network is peer-to-peer transactions that take place between users directly and recorded in a public ledger called a blockchain.  The creator of Bitcoin remains a mystery.  Satoshi Nakamoto, is associated with Bitcoin but who is Satoshi Nakamoto?  Since releasing bitcoin in 2009, everything from booking hotels to buying furniture can now be done using bitcoin.  However much of the hype of Bitcoin comes from those that trade Bitcoin on the open market.

The price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high in 2017 and the future of Bitcoin is still a mystery as it is unregulated and many countries like China and South Korea are weighing the options for regulation.  The South Korean government’s main concern is with taxes and their lack of control over their currency.

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