Crypto Academy | Season 2 - Week 1 | Home Work Post for @yohan2on | Looking Beyond the Bitcoin

Dear Steemians,

I am very excited about the Crypto Academy Season 2 and eager to learn so many new things about crypto world. This is an excellent platform provided by Steemit management and it will become the best resource to learn about crypto for everyone.

Steemit Crypto Academy Professor @yohan2on has explained in depth about the altcoins and I was able to understand the following thing from this lecture;

• Definition of Altcoin
• Need for Altcoins Creation
• Types of altcoins
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Altcoins

Home Work Task
At the end of the lecture, students were assigned a homework task by Professor @yohan2on to write about any of the coins mentioned below

Homework Task: Write about any one of the following Altcoins

• Litecoin (LTC)
• Ripple (XRP)
• Binance coin (BNB)

I have decided to write on Ripple (XRP) for homework task.

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A Brief introduction to Ripple and XRP

When I heard about Ripple (XRP) for the first time, I thought it is a cryptocurrency that can be traded on crypto exchanges but that was not the case. In fact, there is a difference between Ripple and XRP.

• Ripple is an open-source decentralized platform created by Ripple Labs Inc, A US based Technology Company. It was created with the vision of making financial transactions faster across the globe at lower costs. This is a breakthrough in the financial system because it takes 3 to 7 days for International Bank transfers and we have to face the Tax and FED duty as well as the FX Conversion tax which is a literal pain. So Ripple was designed to overcome these problems and unleash the power of secure, fast and low cost global payments.

• XRP is native digital asset on Ripple Ledger, that is an open source decentralized blockchain. XRP can be used directly for payment purposes and we don't need the permission or approval of any authority like Central banks. At the time of writing this post, XRP transaction settlement time was 3.88 seconds with transaction fees on $0.0001255 with a rate of 1500 transactions per second.

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My 1st Experience with XRP

It was the start of year 2017 and I was involved in forex trading. There was hype of cryptocurrencies and how to trade them so I also started to take interest in crypto trading. Being a forex trader, it was not difficult for me to understand crypto trading and I also started trading in crypto market. There was lots of talk about the XRP coin that it is better than bitcoin and has huge potential so I decided to put $100 into it. It was priced at $0.10 per coin when I made that trade and bought 1000 coins. To my surprise, the price of XRP increased 3 times taking it to $0.40 within few days. This convinced me the great potential of XRP and whole crypto market and I decided to stay in this market.

Advantages of XRP in Financial Transactions

Fast Processing
The transaction processing time across the XRP ledger is 3 to 5 seconds which faster than bitcoin and litecoin that takes about 600 seconds

Scalability
The XRP ledger can carry out 1500 transactions per second which makes it faster than bitcoin and most of the altcoins.

Low Transaction Fees
This is the dream of all traders and businesses to have small transaction fees and XRP serves this purpose as it has a very low transaction fees as I mention above which is $0.0001255 which is almost nothing.

Distributed Globally
XRP Ledger is distributed globally and run by decentralized network of 150+ validators.

Eco-Friendly
As XRP ledger carries out transactions instantly, it makes XRP Eco-friendly because it saves energy that is associated with proof of work - mining.

Technical Outlook of XRP

I would like to share few things to cover the technical outlook or XRP that will help everyone understand and take decisions if they want to get involved.

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At the time of writing this post, the price of XRP was $1.65 and it has breakout of that sluggish phase and now looking to test ATH of $3.40 that was attained in last bull cycle of 2018. This can be seen clearly in below chart of XRP as the breakout has happened with so much impulse.

Currently, XRP is ranked 4th in Crypto market but looking at the recent impulsive breakout and massive hype going around, it will take over to 3rd spot very soon.

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If we look at the last 30 days data, we can clearly see a breakout and start of uptrend as shown in below chart. This is an indication of the new bullish moves in XRP with current market hype.

Image Source Screenshot by me from Tradingview Charts

Exchanges to Trade XRP

XRP can be traded at number of exchanges and few of them are shown in below picture. Out of these exchanges, Binance is my favourite because XRP can be traded in multiple crypto currencies like BTC, USDT, ETH, BNB and TRX. At the same time XRP can be traded in different Fiat currencies like Euro, GBP and AUD as shown in below image. Bittrex and Poloniex are the other ones that have easy to use interface and you can get along easily.

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Wallets to Store XRP

If you are not a trader and just want to invest in XRP and want to keep your coins secure then you should store them on a wallet. Keeping a crypto asset on hardware wallet is the best way to keep your assets secure for any amount of time you want. There are many wallets available to keep your XRP and few of them are mentioned below;

1 - Ledger Nano S (Hardware Wallet)
2 - Trezor (Hardware Wallet)
3 - Edge Wallet (Open Source Wallet on iOS and Android)
4 - Rippex (Desktop Wallet)
5 - Atomic Wallet (Mobile Wallet)

Summary

• XRP is a crypto currency developed by Ripple Labs Inc with the purpose of creating secure and faster transactions with low fees in the financial system
• My 1st experience with XRP was very profitable that yielded 300% profit for me in few days
• There are many advantages of XRP in financial transactions like faster processing, low fees, scalability, distributed globally and eco-friendly.
• XRP is currently at 4th number in market with price broke out from long consolidation phase and it is looking to reach previous ATH and go to 3rd rank in market.
• There are many exchanges to trade XRP with Binance, Bittrex and Poloniex having easy to use interfaces.
• XRP can be placed and stored in hardware, desktop or mobile wallets if you want to keep them securely for long period.

I would like to pay my thanks to our Crypto Professor @yohan2on for this wonderful lecture and looking to learn more in the coming weeks.

CC : @kouba01