Past 2 weeks have seen Ripple (XRP) lose 18% of its value. In the crypto world where most want to reject banks like an Outlaw, Ripple appears appears to be the Bad Boy with Big Boys. Yet Ripple has proven its worth with Alpha Trials and adoption with Banks for Faster payments and settlements. Ripple is here to stay and will only grow HOLD IT, BUY IT, now Why do we say this?
Unlike other speculative currencies Ripple – XRP has tremendous value for supporting transfers and settlements hence it is inherently stable. Ripples long term inter-network bridge n ledger which will only be more valuable as more adoption grows and XRP is the currency that is geared for efficiently transfer across the ripple network.
It will cover both banks and individuals in the long run. Some who thinks that fiat money and banks will vanish is just fool hardy.
Image 1 – Ripple (XRP) charts. Source: https://coinmarketcap.com
Ripple (XRP) True Value:
Given the deflationary nature of XRP, as once transacted the currency is destroyed over time ripple will become lesser and lesser in circulation and become more valuable , which means that a tiny amount of XRP is permanently shredded after each transaction. It’s the opposite of unlimited supply. As time goes on, the supply of Bitcoin remains the same while the supply of XRP will actually shrink, making it even more valuable with each passing day.
Also out of 100 billion from which 38 billion are in circulation and 55 billion XRP to be put into time-based escrow (https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-to-place-55-billion-xrp-in-escrow-to-ensure-certainty-into-total-xrp-supply/) smart contracts for a period of at least four-and-a-half years. The structure of it means no one has to worry about Ripple flooding the market by selling their own XRP holdings.
This is starting End of ’2017, by this Ripple ensures that the supply of XRP in circulation is predictable and increases at a slow but steady rate.
Here is the XRP Circulation roadmap: Ripple to Place 55 Billion XRP in Escrow to Ensure Certainty of Total XRP Supply | Ripple (https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-to-place-55-billion-xrp-in-escrow-to-ensure-certainty-into-total-xrp-supply/)
The XRP set aside in an escrow is locked up. No one can use or destroy the XRP until the escrow has been successfully finished or canceled. Before the expiration time, only the intended receiver can get the XRP. After the expiration time, the XRP can only be returned to the sender.
Escrow
Escrow is a feature of the XRP Ledger that allows you to send conditional XRP payments. These conditional payments, called *escrows*, set aside XRP and deliver it later when certain conditions are met. Conditions to successfully finish an escrow include time-based unlocks and crypto-conditions (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomas-crypto-conditions-03). Escrows can also be set to expire if not finished in time. Conditional held payments are a key feature for full Interledger Protocol (https://interledger.org/) support, which enables chains of payments to cross any number of ledgers.
Background:
Ripple holds a large amount of the total XRP, which it sells methodically as a way to fund and incentivize the healthy development of the XRP Ledger and related technologies. At the same time, owning such a large chunk of XRP causes problems for the company, such as:
- Individuals and businesses who use the XRP Ledger worry that their investments in XRP could be diluted or devalued if Ripple were to flood the market by selling at a higher rate than usual.
- Although flooding the market would be a long-term loss for Ripple, the possibility that the company could do so exerts downward pressure over the price of XRP, and thus decreases the value of the company’s assets.
- Ripple must carefully manage ownership of its accounts to protect against digital theft and other forms of malicious behavior, even by insiders.
Solution:
By placing 55 billion XRP into time-based escrows, Ripple ensures that the supply of XRP in circulation is predictable and increases at a slow but steady rate. Others who hold XRP know that Ripple cannot flood the market, even if the company’s priorities or strategy changes.
Placing the money into escrow does not directly protect Ripple’s holdings from malicious actors, but it sharply reduces the amount of XRP that can be quickly stolen or redirected if a malicious actor gains temporary control over Ripple’s XRP accounts. This reduces the risk of catastrophic losses of XRP and increases the time for Ripple to detect, prevent, and track down unintended uses of Ripple’s XRP assets.
Use Case: Interledger Payments
Background:
In the quickly-developing world of financial technology, one of the core challenges is coordinating activities that cross multiple digital money systems, or ledgers. Many proposed solutions to this problem (including early views of the XRP Ledger!) can be reduced to creating “one ledger to rule them all.” Ripple believes no single system can meet the needs of everyone in the world: in fact, some desirable features are mutually exclusive. Instead, Ripple believes that an interconnected network of ledgers—an interledger—is the true future of financial technology. The Interledger Protocol (https://interledger.org/) defines standards for making as many systems as possible able to connect securely and smoothly.
The most fundamental principle of inter-ledger payments is *conditional transfers*. Multi-hop payments have a risk problem: the more hops in the middle, the more places the payment can fail. Interledger solves this with the financial equivalent of a “two-phase commit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-phase_commit_protocol), where the two steps are (1) prepare conditional transfers, then (2) fulfill the conditions to execute the transfers. The Interledger project defined a crypto-conditions (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomas-crypto-conditions-03) specification to standardize automated ways to define and verify conditions, and settled on SHA-256 hashes as a “common denominator” of such conditions.
Solution:
The Escrow feature makes the XRP Ledger ideal for bridging multi-hop payments using the Interledger Protocol, because it natively supports transfers that deliver XRP based on PREIMAGE-SHA-256 crypto-conditions, and it executes those transfers within seconds of being presented with the matching fulfillment.
Further Reading : https://ripple.com/build/escrow/#why-escrow (https://ripple.com/build/escrow/#why-escrow)
Also read; How Ripple will De-centralize in long run. https://ripple.com/insights/how-we-are-further-decentralizing-the-ripple-consensus-ledger-rcl-to-bolster-robustness-for-enterprise-use/ (https://ripple.com/insights/how-we-are-further-decentralizing-the-ripple-consensus-ledger-rcl-to-bolster-robustness-for-enterprise-use/)