Currently, China is leading in Bitcoin mining industry by far, second to none for bitcoin mining power. Literally, it’s contributing over 70% of the network’s hash rate (a term that is used in describing the total processing power of a blockchain network). But how Ripple fits in here and what it has to do with that? We’ll talk about that a bit later below, let’s cover some in-depth facts about China’s dominance over Bitcoin first.
It’s a near-complete dominance by China on the BTC mining grid that has made it responsible for mining a majority of circulating bitcoins. A Beijing-based company, Bitmain Technologies, is highly responsible for extracting the significant part – more than half of the globe’s bitcoin, and alone, it has approached 50% of the total hash rate more than once.
The fact that China is controlling a majority of Bitcoin hash rate, clearly tells that it has the power of manipulating or merely destroy the bitcoin network if it gets enough support should it decide to take such a move. Therefore, this has led to serious concerns among countries including the US that China might get an edge in this cryptocurrency industry and possibly becoming a potential threat.
China is the biggest manufacturer of Bitcoin as well as cryptocurrency mining equipment. The reason behind the massive growth of mining farms in the country is because of cheap electricity bills.
Furthermore, the country has adopted several policies that block access to foreign exchanges. Also, it has banned ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) and implemented several other policies for them to gain control over the cryptocurrency market while keeping the foreign players out.
Ripple to the Rescue
According to some recent reports, there is an interest in Ripple from the U.S. administration to thwart China’s Bitcoin dominance. That’s utterly fake news, as per our research and knowledge US government isn’t considering an alliance with the blockchain company.
But Ripple doesn’t need Trump to grow its adoption (yeah, that will be huge if it gets official US support, but it’s not the only way), and can be an excellent weapon to tackle the Bitcoin dominance issue if one thinks about it. Ripple, unlike Bitcoin, is a private blockchain which potentially makes it attractive more to banks where a lot of them are expected to be using the XRP technology by next year.
However, for several occasions, Ripple has been under fire for the fact that it’s more centralized as compared to other cryptocurrencies. For instance, Ripple Labs is in control of 60 billion XRP, which translates to 60% of the total supply.
Last month XRP did well as compared to the rest, and currently, it is trading at $0.455 that is still not even half of its all-time high value, $3.84 that the crypto had in January this year.
During the recent Swell conference in San Francisco which had former President Bill Clinton among the key speakers, Ripple labs announced signing up three companies (payment providers Caullix, Catalyst Corporate Credit Union, and MercuryFX) for the new xRapid service (that uses XRP token).
Several banks, as well as financial institutions, have an interest in the blockchain technology along with digital assets like Ripple. For instance, Santander, a banking giant, had introduced Ripple Labs’ blockchain-powered application to enable cheap and speedy cross-border foreign exchange. For now, it seems Ripple is the best way forward for the banks and may counter China’s Bitcoin dominance.
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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.
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