Ripple to become the new Bitcoin?



RIPPLE seems to be the one cryptocurrency which can seriously compete with the behemoth bitcoin, due to the fact that banks actually seem to like it.

Unlike bitcoin, ripple has a physical base in San Francisco, USA. It has attracted tens of millions of dollars worth of investment leading to it being dubbed the bitcoin that banks, such as Santander, like. 

It does not hold the level of anonymity that bitcoin does, which is seen as a “revolutionary” tool. There seems to be more trust placed in ripple by financial institutions. 

Ripple is a protocol that allows the participant to have a "ledger" of decentralised operations but is still certified by some large nodes of the Network, such as telephone operators or academic institutions, like MIT.

This certification has lead to ripple doubling in price during the last week of December. Wednesday saw the cryptocurrency jump by 18 percent to an all time high of $2.90

Ripple or XRP has a market capitalisation of $112billion - second only to bitcoin’s market capitalisation of $225billion. Market capitalisation refers to the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding shares.

Ripple has gained more than 45,700 percent over the last 12 months. 

Last week South Korean regulators discussed implementing tighter regulations surrounding cryptocurrencies, a move which hurt the value of most major blockchain currencies - except for ripple.

One big factor that helped boost ripple was the launch of a new cross border payment trial with two of South Korea’s largest banks by the Japan Bank Consortium, a coalition of 61 Japanese financial institutions.

SBI Ripple Asia is an Asia-Pacific partnership of ripple and SBI Holdings and was formed in 2016. 

SBI Ripple Asia said it has entered into partnership agreement with some of the leading Japanese credit card companies, including JCB, Sumitomo Mitsui Card and Credit Saison.