Thanks to its nature and various products, the cryptocurrency Ripple (XRP) is quickly becoming the number one desired crypto for many banks around the world. However, there is also a certain controversy regarding its nature, and many believe that XRP is actually a security.
Banks choose Ripple
Ripple has had a lot of success recently, and most of its achievements include its adoption by various banks and other financial institutions. Its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has stated recently that this crypto has a very bright future, and that a lot of banks will be using its ledger in the near future. This is hardly surprising, considering that this ledger is an open-source codebase and that it is capable of performing over 1500 transactions per second.
Ripple’s team is working hard on improving the coin, which includes a large project that is expected to provide better liquidity solutions. That way, sending the payments cross-border will be much faster, cheaper, and more transparent, especially when compared to traditional methods of sending the funds. All the money that is being sent first gets converted to XRP, and then to any other crypto that the receiver prefers. Obviously, scalability and speed are of great importance here, and Ripple is perfectly capable of handling both.
With that in mind, it is no wonder that the banks are jumping on the opportunity to start using this cryptocurrency, and are adopting it at a massive rate. But, there is still a certain controversy, with the main question being – is Ripple a cryptocurrency at all?
Is Ripple (XRP) a cryptocurrency?
When people talk about Ripple, the large majority is considering it to be a crypto. However, there are those who believe that its design doesn’t allow it to be. These are the same critics who claim that XRP doesn’t serve the original purpose of cryptos.
Let’s take Bitcoin as an example. It was designed to create an alternative to fiat and to be decentralized. While it did achieve decentralization, Bitcoin has not managed to completely fulfill its purpose as a digital currency. However, this was only to be expected. It came as the first of its kind, and it was bound to make some mistakes along the way. This is why altcoins have developed so that they could fix what Bitcoin cannot change, and deliver the digital coin that Bitcoin was supposed to be.
However, Ripple doesn’t do that either. It is completely different than Bitcoin, which has its justifications. After all, you do not fix technological mistakes by doing the same thing that led to those mistakes being made. However, Ripple has gone a step too far in differentiating itself from Bitcoin, and along the way, it lost one of the biggest attributes of cryptocurrencies – decentralization.
XRP is fully owned by Ripple the company. This has its pros and cons, but the main question is – is cryptocurrency a cryptocurrency if it has an owner and a governing entity behind it?
The matter of decentralization
The first thing to consider here is that even the company behind XRP doesn’t call it a cryptocurrency. The term they are using for it is ‘digital asset’.
Ripple is not decentralized, which is a fact. Decentralization is also a necessity for a crypto to be considered crypto, which is something that XRP has not managed to achieve as of yet. However, it is still a digital coin. The fact that it is centralized simply means that it has a governing system that can influence its price. And while decentralized coins have the crypto market dictating their future, Ripple doesn’t take that chance. Decentralization brings transparency, but also uncertainty, which is something that XRP has been trying to avoid so far.
The value of Ripple and its products to the world of business and economy has already been discussed previously, but the point remains – its nature is of great use to the modern way of sending payments.
However, Ripple is a coin that is constantly working on making itself better. This is why its development team has announced that Ripple will achieve decentralization in the future. The plans to do so are already set in motion, and the platform is even expected to launch ICOs sometime in the future.
Some skeptics believe that this is an empty promise, but XRP has proven to fulfill its promises. After all, it did become an open-source platform, which is also something that not many people believed it will happen.
So, in the end, is Ripple a cryptocurrency? Not exactly, or rather – not completely. However, has proven its worth. It has also proven that it is working on fixing its mistakes, which means that it might as well be considered a crypto since it will achieve the full status sooner or later.
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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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