RIPPLE!! Please read,and comment with your thoughts 💭

Ripple/XRP

The third largest cryptocurrency by market cap is Ripple, which is traded under the XRP ticker, currently hovering around a mere .26 cents a unit. XRP is backed by a company, named Ripple, that was started by several Wall Street finance executives in 2012. Ripple does not appeal to people who follow Bitcoin or Ethereum for their "revolutionary" nature and the possibilities that it could upend the banking system. In fact, Ripple is working with the banks. What Ripple's initial implementation will be is as a payment network, like PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), Square, Apple Pay (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Pay (NASDAQ:FB), or any other network you can think of. It works like Bitcoin by having a decentralized ledger to track and verify all transactions, and is backed by a central group held responsible. It is also capable of scaling exponentially larger in transaction volume than Bitcoin or Ethereum, and is capable of processing each transaction in mere seconds.

On top of it's design supporting many transactions both quickly and securely, it is able to do so at a lower cost than the existing methods banks use today. As a result of this combination of offerings, Ripple is poised to be the primary service used to send some of the $500,000,000,000 remittance payments made each year. Currently, XRP's market cap stands at $10.25 Billion, representing over a 48x increase if all the value of the remittance market value was stored in XRP at once.

One of Ripple's biggest advantages of over Bitcoin in gaining this market is it's distancing from the criminal black market that made Bitcoin it's name. By being backed by traditional Wall Street types (and real people in general as opposed to the notorious "Sotoshi Nakamoto") and not providing for a criminal use-case, banks are much more open to utilizing blockchain technology. Plus, banks are logical, bottom-line drive enterprises. If they can send money faster, more cheaply and with increased liquidity they would be crazy to say no.

The Tipping Point

I believe we are at the tipping point for XRP. In recent weeks, Ripple has announced their 100th banking partner signed up with an intent to use their Ripple Network for sending payments, as well as the first official announcement of the first actual deployment of the network. Due to the fact that XRP, like Bitcoin, is deflationary in nature with a set amount ever going to be in circulation (100,000,000,000 units), as more value get's stored in or even transferred through the Ripple Network, the price per unit will naturally increase. We are at the start of a snowball effect, where once one bank starts using Ripple, the average transaction volume will increase tremendously, as currently only speculative traders are buying and selling (or holding) XRP. Once all 100 of these banking partners come online, and the network is proven to be superior, many more banks will begin clamoring to sign up.

Coupled with a recent incentive program introduced by Ripple to expedite adoption, it seems as though the culmination of the last 5 years of progress by the company is poised to really take hold in the coming months.

Combined with uncertainty in the upcoming forks of Bitcoin with Segwit2x, BitcoinGold, and Ethereum's aforementioned move from Proof-of-Work to Proof-Of-Stake, the perfect storm is brewing for Ripple to take off among speculative traders, institutional investors and bank clients.

Additionally, the law of large numbers dictates it is much easier for the price to appreciate from .25 to $1.00 than BTC to go from $6,000 to $12,000. With Bitcoin paving the way for blockchain, Ethereum paving the way for Enterprise use of blockchain, and Ripple taking the best components of each and combining it with connections to the finance industry, Ripple will surely provide at least 100% returns in the next 5 years for anybody buying in below .30 cents.

In Conclusion

While Bitcoin and Ether are likely to provide additional gains long-term for those willing to buy and hold, their tremendous run-up has limited upside potential remaining and huge downside risk. Ripple, on the other hand, has quietly poised itself as the main contender to grab an enormous market, with potential to expand into IoT applications or other similar value transfer opportunities down the line. The fact that everyday consumers will be using XRP without ever owning or touching it themselves illustrates just how fast adoption could increase in a relatively short time as the Ripple Network comes online. Ripple is extremely difficult to obtain for the average investor at this moment, with not very many exchanges supporting it. This is the most obvious long-term winner in the cryptocurrency space.