Ripple is a Virtual Money issued by OpenCoin, called Ripple Credits or XRP in Chinese. It is also known as Ripple.

Ripple is the world's first open Payment Network, and through this Payment Network, you can transfer any kind of currency. It is simple, convenient, and fast, with transaction confirmation completed within a few seconds. Money Laundering is almost zero, and there are no so-called interbank or cross-border payment fees.
The Ripple open payment system is a Virtual Money network (a distributed P2P clearing network) and a future electronic payment platform. In 2004, Ryan Fugger launched the first implementation of Ripple, with the aim of building a Decentralization, allowing anyone to create their own currency, Virtual Money system. Currently, Ripple is developed, operated, and maintained by OpenCoin company (currently renamed as RippleLabs).
 
 
The Birth of Ripple
 
Perhaps in the eyes of outsiders, Ripple is a latecomer, but in fact, the origin of the Ripple project long preceded BTC. In 2004, Ryan Fugger launched the first implementation version of Ripple. Its goal is to build a Decentralization, allowing anyone to create their own currency Virtual Money system. The money in the Ripple network is represented by "debt", and all transactions are manifested as changes in account balances.
Its operation is similar to the bank's clearing system: when making interbank transfers, the actual transfer of funds between banks will be postponed as much as possible until the night, when the bank calculates its payable amounts with other banks. It is possible that the pending transfer from a bank exactly offsets the pending transfer to that bank, so it actually does not need to transfer any funds; even if it cannot be completely offset, the actual amount transferred is generally far less than the sum of the customer's telegraphic transfer amounts.
The original intention of the Ripple project is to establish a distributed P2P clearing network: everyone is their own bank, can issue, accept loans, and at the same time serve as a lending channel (for example, if A wants to borrow money from B, they do not know each other, but happen to both know C, then C can serve as a channel for A and B, C borrows money from B first, and then lends the money to A indirectly realizes A borrowing money from B).
The project was almost entirely supported by Ryan Fugger and achieved a certain level of success. However, Ripple's user base has not been long, only popular in a few isolated small circles, for a simple reason: Ripple's design is based on familiar relationships and trust chains. For a person to use the Ripple network for remittances or loans, it is essential that there is already support for him in the network, otherwise a trust chain cannot be established between the user and other users.
 
 
Total Ripple Supply
 
Ripple has a total issuance of 100 billion XRP. XRP can currently be precise to six decimal places. The smallest unit is called a drop. 1,000,000 drops equal 1 XRP, 1 XRP = 1,000,000 dXRP. Simply put, XRP is the basic virtual money issued by OpenCoin in the Ripple network, just like BTC, it can circulate throughout the network without being limited to a familiar circle. Traditional currencies are stored in different financial systems, such as VISA/MASTERCARD credit cards or Alipay.
If you want to transfer money within different siblings, they will charge you high fees and different financial systems will rigorously check your identity. XRP is used to pay extremely small fees in each transaction, and can be transferred and exchanged between Ripple entrance Nodes and can be exchanged for any currency. The total issuance of XRP is fixed and was set at 100 billion at the beginning. There will be no more issuance. Ripple's Money Laundering is very low, with only 1/1000 of a cent in transaction fees per transaction. This transaction fee is used to prevent anyone from disrupting the system through a large number of transactions.
 
 
Features of Ripple
 
1. Low Money Laundering
The transaction between different Fiat Currency usually charges a few percent, plus Money Laundering. Any transaction of Ripple is less than 0.01$.
2, anonymous
The Ripple network does not require users to provide email, names, or any other information, providing privacy for consumers.
3. Security
Sending ripple is like sending cash, with no additional fees after receipt. When paying with credit cards and checks, the payer must provide personal information, which may lead to fraud.
4. Reliable
Because ripple transactions are non-reversible, merchants can trade with anyone without worrying about regrets.
 
 
Ripple's functions:
 
1. Dual circulation of reality and Virtual Money;
2, P2P exchange and payment of long currency;
3, P2P network credit;
4. Personal network settlement.
 
 
Advantages of Ripple
 
Like BTC, Ripple is a type of shareable public database and a global ledger. The Consensus Mechanism allows all computers in the Ripple network to automatically accept updates to the ledger information within seconds, without the need for a central data exchange center. This processing speed represents a major engineering breakthrough for Ripple. It means that Ripple's transaction confirmation time is only 3 to 5 seconds, while BTC requires 40 minutes.
 
 
 
Similarities between Ripple and BTC
 
The design goal of the Ripple network is to seamlessly transfer any form of currency, whether it is US dollars, euros, pounds, yen, or BTC, providing a solution.
Stephen Thomas, a senior developer of Ripple protocol and a proponent of Bitcoin, said: Ripple will open longer gateways for Bitcoin users, just like Bitcoin, it is a bridge that makes it easier for Bitcoin to connect to the mainstream financial world.
1. Ripple and BTC are both Open Source, and can be transferred between accounts, just like BTC, without any third-party software, through P2P transmission network.
2. Ripple, like BTC, is sent via the internet and transactions are irreversible, both providing unique anti-counterfeiting proof for Digital Money.
3, ripple uses the same underlying encryption technology as BTC
4. Ripple has multi-signature support
5. Money Laundering is very low
6. Anyone can run a ripple server
 
 
Differences between Ripple and BTC
 
1) The Ripple network supports multiple currencies. In addition to its own Ripple coin, it also supports fiat currencies (such as the US dollar, euro, yen, etc.), and plans to support BTC in the near future, with the potential to support all Virtual Money in the future.
2) The Ripple network automatically converts the Exchange Rate. That means users can pay others with any type of currency and achieve the global circulation of all currencies.
3）The transaction confirmation process of Ripple can be completed within a few seconds. Ripple has introduced a "Consensus" mechanism, which can verify and confirm transactions in a very short time through the voting of special Nodes.
4) The Ripple client does not need to download the blockchain. It discards the already verified total ledger chain on the ordinary Node, only retaining the most recently verified total ledger and a link to the historical total ledger, so the workload of synchronizing and downloading the total ledger is very small.
5) Ripple does not require and cannot be mined.
6）The total amount of Ripple coins cannot only increase, but can only decrease. The company has created 100 billion units of Ripple coins and plans to eventually supply 75% of Ripple coins to the external issuance, promising never to increase. Users need to spend a certain amount of Ripple coins for each transaction (the amount is very, very low, about 1/1000 of a cent), and this transaction fee is not paid to anyone, it just disappears into thin air. Therefore, Ripple coins will only become less and less, but the decrease is very slow.
 
 
Ripple's profit model
 
Ripple (XRP) is also a digital currency based on mathematics and cryptography, just like BTC. However, unlike BTC, XRP has a primary bridge currency and a guaranteed security function in the Ripple system. The guaranteed security function is indispensable, which requires gateways participating in this protocol to hold a small amount of XRP.
In theory, the gateways do not need to hold a long amount of XRP, and its price is very cheap, with 1 XRP costing only 0.4 cents (as of March 14, 2015, the price has risen to around 1 cent). Similar to BTC, the quantity of XRP cannot be 'over-issued' (with a total supply of 100 billion), but a small amount of XRP is destroyed with each transaction, which means that the quantity of XRP will gradually decrease. If Ripple protocol can become the mainstream global payment protocol, the demand for XRP by gateways will be more widespread - high demand and decreasing supply will result in the appreciation of XRP.
Ripple Labs holds 77 billion XRP, valued at approximately $300 million at a price of 0.4 cents. Ripple Labs stated that in order to have more participants in the Ripple protocol, they will gradually donate 55 billion XRP to users in the system, while keeping 22 billion for themselves. If the Ripple protocol becomes the mainstream payment protocol and the quantity of XRP decreases, the value of XRP will increase. Even if most of the XRP is donated, the value of Ripple Labs can still be very high.
This is just a speculation. After all, this payment protocol is still a new thing. So far, the first and only bank in the world to announce its access to Ripple protocol is Fidor Bank in Germany, which is an Internet direct bank actively exploring the field of digital money and headquartered in Munich, Germany. Previously, the bank's cooperation with BTC was also considered a pioneering move.
 
Although Ripple protocol has made a start, it still has a long way to go to 'conquer' banks, especially traditional banks that are not as innovative as Fidor.
 
*Content Source: MBA Zhiku, Zhihu, etc., compiled by Feixiaohao, if reproduced, please indicate the source.