This is my first time joining the Steemit Crypto Academy and I am starting on @yohan2on's Lesson about Altcoins "Looking Beyond the Bitcoin". We were tasked to create a homework article about Litecoin, Ripple, or Binance Coin and I am choosing XRP as my article today.

XRP (or commonly known as Ripple), is a cryptocurrency that aims to be the leading technology for global payment systems and become an "Internet of value", which means they want to move money the same as information does - fast. This cryptocurrency is aiming to revolutionize the banking system and payment providers, allowing them to:

• Have lower transaction cost
• Faster processing time
• Avoid third-party providers, to reduce cost

As of today, it is one of the leading cryptocurrencies having a market cap of around $81 billion, $1.78 each. In fact, this week XRP's value has risen from more than 300% in the past month. Last month, you can buy XRP for less than $0.50 each!

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Why Ripple is known for its Digital Payment Network and Protocol

The obvious problems that we have with our banking systems and payment providers were the reasons behind the rise of XRP. Ripple offers solutions to these institutions that are way better than the current system they are using. In fact, the system that these banks and payment providers use was already old, very old like more than 40 years.

Imagine sending money to a friend only to be told the money can be received a day later, asked to write down forms with you and your friend's personal details on them, and pay a relatively high fee for the transaction.

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Ripple uses a protocol known as RTXP (Ripple Transaction Protocol) and is maintained by validators (a network of computers) that are spread around the world and are tasked to maintain a shared ledger of who owns what. This means that since the network is distributed among validators that are spread across the globe, it is very difficult and almost impossible to threaten the network. This what makes cryptocurrencies in general very difficult to hack because the systems are not centralized. In fact, everyone can become a validator if he meets the necessary requirements (nodes, etc).

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The Ripple Products that Optimize Insitutional Payment Solutions

• xRapid - a liquidity solution that is intentionally made to solve payment delays in global payments, lowering down the transaction cost. In short, xRapid offers cross-border payments instant and inexpensive

• xVia - known as an integrator is offering payment originators and corporations to access the power of Ripplenet. In order for you to access the network, you need gateways and this is exactly what xVia is offering. Since xVia only serve as your gateway to ripplenet, it doesn't need XRPs to use.
  

  
  
  _{A simple flow chart of the importance of xVia to access Ripplenet, courtesy of Ripple.com}

• xCurrent - Mainly used to process payments. The goal of xCurrent is to provide an interbank communications and settlement software built around the Interledger Protocol (ILP). This enables banks across the globe to have a solid system that interlinks them. Thus, this provides an instant settlement for cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking.

_{Process flow of payment systems with the help of xCurrent courtesey of Ripple.com}

xCurrent is also the technology behind the network's security, providing a secure end-to-end payment flow with cryptographic representations and ensures that the transfers have legal affirmations.

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The IOU token

Since one of the goals of Ripple is to create a peer-to-peer trust network of financial relations that would replace banks, the IOU tokens were introduced.

Yes, it sounds like I owe you is another that allows users and entities to issue IOU tokens (which are debt tokens) that are issued once you owe someone an amount. The process of simple, if I owe someone with a $$ amount, to prove that I have a debt I will issue IOU tokens to that person.

Tokens issued are like this: USD.jassennessaj - this means that if I issue 100 USD.jassennessaj token to someone, it just means that I owe them $$ in the form of 100 USD.jassennessaj.

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How Was Ripple Distributed

OpenCoin is the first name of Ripple before it was later changed by Ripple Labs released in September 2013. The main issue behind Ripple before and today was its supply and company reserves. Take a look at how Ripple was initially distributed:

Owner	Amount in XRP	Today's Value
Ripple Company	80 billion XRP	$156 billion
Chris Larsen	9.5 billion XRP	$18.525 billion
Jed McCaleb	9.5 billion XRP	$18.525 billion
Jed McCaleb's other family members and charity	1.5 billion XRP	$2.925 billion
Arthur Brito (subject to lock-up agreement)	1 billion XRP	$1.95 billion

Then sometime after July 2018, Ripple disclosed these balances:

• 7 billion XRP held by Ripple
• 39 billion XRP distributed
• 55 billion XRP placed in escrow

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The Pros and Cons of Ripple

Pros

• It fasts, scalable, and low cost - This was one of the flagships of Ripple. It is offering a technology that is better than the traditional banking and payment systems provide.
• Immutability & Security - Ripple uses a protocol called RTXP which acts as a distributed ledger among all validators spread throughout the world and uses cryptographically secure transactions to provide a very strong network.
• Backed by Banking Systems - The likes of American Express, LuLu Exchange, Santander, Interbank, SBI Remit, and many more are running the Ripplenet.
• Accessible for Real-Time cross-border payments across 55+ countries - Countries like United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, and many more are very much accessible with Ripple.

Cons

• Over-supply - the likelihood of having an oversupply is that the value will not increase big time. Having 100 billion in supply is something that is worried about by investors. This leads to the second con:
• Centralized - Ripple is believed to be centralized because of the massive supply the company is owning. Their massive stake in XRP (ripple Labs, Larsen, and McCaleb) is making the investors worry.
• Ongoing SEC Case - XRP has been in constant battle with SEC for a long time now because of the supply they are owning. Though right now, things have been heavily in favor of Ripple.
• The Rise of other altcoins - There has been a massive increase of promising cryptocurrencies over a span of 4 years since the bitcoin bubble last 2017. This divides investor's attention and focus on XRP because the market now is very competitive than before.

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Conclusion

Ripple is a promising cryptocurrency with an amazing use case. This is evident because large banks are now using Ripplenet for their payment systems in the hopes of faster, reliable, and lower fees occurred during the transfer process (especially cross-border payments). Despite of the huge supply, I still think Ripple will still hit the $3 - $5 mark by any time of the year.

Please take note that this is not financial advice and I'm only sharing information based on my mere knowledge and research. This should not be taken as a basis of your financial decisions. Invest at your own risk and do your own research.

But on a personal note, I am bullish with XRP since the SEC ruling and case was the main reason behind it is lagging. Let's wait for a couple of months and see where is Ripple going.

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Sources:

• Ripple Consensus Whitepaper
• xRapid Explained
• xVia brochure from Ripple.com
• xCurrent brochure from Ripple.com
• Ripple Payment Protocol Wikipedia
• A guide to the Ripple product Suite
• The Ripple Story
• XRP to USD by coingecko
• Use Cases Banks from Ripple
• RippleNet now live in over 40 countries
• ripple Executives are now Billionaires
• Another win for XRP in SEC V Ripple Case
• What is Ripple

Thank you to our professor @yohan2on for having such an interesting lesson!