What Is Ripple XRP?

Ripple Net

Ripple is a network that has changed the way money is transferred and the speed at which is is done.  

So lets take a look at how banks have been transferring and sending money for the past 50 years. Banks use companies like Western Union or Swift to transfer funds. There are many more of these companies and not all banks use the same one. As a result banks have to sometimes use intermediary banks to get funds to the final destination. This makes international bank transfers super slow and very expensive because as the money is being sent through a chain of banks and institutions there are fees being added. If the international transfer involves any kind of currency exchange like Rubles to Yuan then fees just get insane. So Ripple has been building a network that it hopes will be the main network that provides uniformity to the industry.   

How It Works 

Ripple uses its own language (RXTP) to move funds speedily across the world. 

Ripple has thousands of computer nodes that use the Ripple Transaction Protocol to validate transactions. So as transactions are sent to the Ripple Net ledger these nodes make sure they follow the protocol and make for a fast system that is super secure. Basically anyone can be a node just like with Bitcoin and countless others. Just like banks have gateways to accept or decline funds and transactions so does Ripple. The difference is that in Ripples case the gateways are a place where people go to create transactions. So the Ripple Network works as the gateway in the traditional banking sense and the Ripple gateways are more comparable to an actual bank location. The main difference is that the Ripple gateways are digital and can be on your phone laptop and so on. Ripple is the internet for money. Allowing money to be sent and accepted almost instantly.