Reasons to invest in Ripples

Digital currencies have emerged as one of the most profitable investments of 2017.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Just take a look at the returns:

• Ethereum is up 2,000%.
• Bitcoin is up 744,233%.
• Litecoin is up 750%.

With the digital currency floodgates open, early investors are becoming accustomed to four-digit returns.

But there’s a catch. Many of the currencies listed above have already achieved mainstream investors. They will continue to generate profits (making them valid investments), but you will never be able to buy them for under $1.

Many digital currency investors are hunting for the next big altcoin, hoping to find a new Bitcoin for the right price.

And the best contender is Ripple. In the last year alone, Ripple is up 3,733%.

Ripple is not your traditional digital currency. Calling it one is the equivalent of calling a horse a mule — you vastly undersell the currency’s potential.

Today, Ripple is busy revolutionizing the way we transfer money and receive payments. Soon, it will change the way we bank and conduct business around the globe.

Over the course of this report, we are going to educate you on Ripple’s potential and expose the top three reasons you need to be investing now. By the end of this report, we hope that you'll rush to the exchanges.

What Is Ripple?

Ripple, in the simplest sense, is a real-time payment system. It allows money to be exchanged between individuals regardless of their locations or their banks.

The digital asset that runs the Ripple network is XRP. When you buy Ripple, you are also purchasing XRP. If you are new to digital currency investing, the best way to think of XRP is as the fuel that powers Ripple.

It is necessary for the technology’s function, but when investing, you will generally refer to XRP as Ripple.

Ripple was introduced in 2012, making it an early mover in the digital currency space. It was also one of the first currencies to have a function outside of being a medium for exchange.

Ripple was developed by an experienced team with deep roots in the digital currency world. Many members of this development team worked with Bitcoin. This included Ripple’s cofounders, OpenCoin CEO Chris Larsen and CTO Jed McCaleb.

Investors considering Ripple need to understand the relationship between OpenCoin and currency. OpenCoin handles many of our digital currency transactions around the world.

OpenCoin, and subsequently Ripple, has received backing from dozens of venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vast Ventures, and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.

But how does Ripple function? How exactly is it unique in the digital currency world?

Those questions transition us to the first reason that you should be investing in Ripple: the Interledger Protocol.

The Interledger Protocol

Everyone is in agreement that our current financial system is flawed.

Transferring money to individuals outside of your bank is a grueling process. And you might as well forget about exchanging money overseas unless you love having a headache.

And that is where Ripple comes in.

Ripple operates something called an Interledger Protocol. This is a use of blockchain technology that makes Ripple unique.

Believe it or not, the idea behind the Interledger Protocol is actually thousands of years old, dating back to Medieval Arabia.

Years ago, individuals would exchange money through an agent.

You, as an individual, would walk up to your agent and give him money with instructions to send it to your friend. This agent would then send it to the agent of your friend.

Even though money didn’t exchange hands on either end, a record of the money being moved was put in place. The receiving person’s agent would be responsible for moving the money along to the intended recipient.

Ripple simplifies that process, issuing a monetary payment through a digital channel. Similar to the medieval method, the money never actually changes hands.

Both people have access to a secure channel, boxing out any potential threat. This makes Ripple an incredibly effective, secure monetary exchange that empowers individuals.

And Ripple’s developers have more in mind for Ripple’s exchange potential than just money. Ripple could be used to exchange anything — simply through the creation of a secure pathway.

This unique function makes it a powerhouse in the digital currency world. And even though this method directly empowers the individual, it is also a profit generator for large corporations.

This brings us to the second reason you should be investing now.

Ripple Is a Best Friend to Banks

I think it would be foolish to think that our banking system will disappear overnight.

This belief is popular in the Bitcoin crowd, with many devoted Bitcoin believers asserting that the world’s first digital currency has the power to rebuild our financial system in mere years.

The reality is different. There is no doubt that digital currency is here to stay. But we are more likely to see it incorporated into our everyday financial lives through large players in the financial world: big banks.

This is good news for Ripple and a strong case for investing in it. Ripple has already been adopted by dozens of banks — 10 more just signed on in April:

1. MUFG
2. BBVA
3. SEB
4. Akbank
5. Axis Bank
6. YES Bank
7. SBI Remit
8. Cambridge Global Payments
9. Star One Credit Union
10. eZforex

This makes Ripple the first digital currency to be adopted by mainstream financial institutions. It’s only picking up momentum.

Why do the banks want Ripple? As always, it goes back to money and the Ripple Interledger’s ability to make a lot of it.

Let’s be honest. No major financial institution adopts a technology for the ease of the customer. They do it to make money. That is the nature of the beast.

Currently, if a bank is using Ripple, it saves $3.76 per payment. That is a cumulative saving of $564,000 a year.

But the greed of financial institutions pays off for customers, who will be able to exchange money across borders and with individuals using different banks.

We can expect to see surges in Ripple’s value once more transactions start taking place between separate banks. We are likely to see this in 2017.

This will simplify our financial system. You will be able to send money to anyone, regardless of what bank they have — through the same simple channels.

The Investors and the Team

We touched briefly on Ripple’s talented development team in the introduction. Now, it is time to expand on what that extensive talent network means for the digital currency in the long term.

It’s no secret that success in the corporate world depends on one thing: clout. For any technology to advance, it has to establish its value for both investors and corporations. Many digital currencies fail to do this because their leadership doesn’t know the right people or methods.

For Ripple, establishing itself was as easy as pie. With two well-connected founders using their complex networks, Ripple quickly attracted venture capital and major investors.

In 2015, Ripple raked in $55 million in venture capital in just one funding round. And this money keeps pouring in with more big investors backing the company weekly.

One particular investor is worth taking note of. It is a tech giant that hasn’t shown a lot of interest in the bulk of digital currencies: Google.

Google was one of Ripple’s early backers. Both the mega-giant and its peer Apple prefer the blockchain method of payment to existing credit cards.

In Ripple, Google saw an opportunity to simplify and secure payments. It knows a good investment when it sees one.

And so do the other venture capitalists pouring money into Ripple. The names backing Ripple — Andreessen Horowitz, FF Angel IV, and Lightspeed Venture — have stood behind dozens of lucrative startups, including Airbnb, Asana, BuzzFeed, Coinbase, Facebook, Twitter, and Snap.