Ripple (XRP) Price Prediction: How High Can XRP Go?

XRP Ledger is an open-source permissionless decentralized network of peer-to-peer servers that was created to become the most practical cryptocurrency for applications across decentralized financial services. The project is designed to facilitate fast, cheap, and efficient crypto payments. With the XRP Ledger, cross-border transactions can be sent in a matter of seconds (3-5 sec) for a very low price ($0.0002 for a transaction).

The project was launched in 2012 by David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto. At first, it was considered a more environment-friendly alternative to Bitcoin. In September 2012 the team was joined by Chris Larsen, and together they founded the OpenCoin company, which was later renamed to Ripple. The company is focused on creating global payment systems.  

The XRP Ledger offers developers various tutorials on how to create solutions on the network, fix any upcoming issues, and solve inefficiencies. The main applications of XRP Ledger are payments, tokenization, DeFi, CBDCs, and stablecoins. 

The network uses the Federated Consensus mechanism, different from both PoW and PoS algorithms. The network participants are known and trusted by the other members, and there is no mining, thus no rewards for mining XRP. When the participants come to an agreement, a new block or a “ledger version” is created and validated. The servers store the block, the content of which can not be changed. Designated servers work as validators and come to an agreement about the transactions each 3-5 seconds. Anyone can become a validator and all the transactions are transparent.  

One of the main advantages of the XRP Ledger is that it is carbon-neutral. According to the official website, it is 61000 times more efficient than Proof-of-Work networks. Moreover, it offers scalability of up to 15000 transactions per second. 

XRP is the native token of the project. The total supply of 100 billion XRP was pre-mined by the original founders when the project was launched in 2012. No more tokens can be ever issued. 800 billion coins were allocated to Ripple for future operations and development and the remaining tokens were divided among the founders. New coins enter circulation when Ripple decides to sell assets from the pre-mined stash. 

In 2017 the company transferred 55 billion of its 80 billion supply to an escrow account, from where it’s only possible to sell 1 billion tokens per month on the secondary market. It was made to improve the transparency and predictability of XPR sales. All the tokens that were not sold during the month are returned to an escrow account for the next sale.

In 2020 Ripple was charged by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulation body accused the company of the illegal raising of $1.38 billion in unregistered security offerings. The main question in this battle is whether or not XRP is a security with the arguments for and against it. 

Ripple followed a different path from most companies in dealing with SEC and decided to fight. According to the recent Ripple XRP news, the company managed to score another procedural victory in the case. Though it didn’t make the whole case clear and the victory of any side is unclear. 

XRP is intended to be a bridge between hard-match fiat currencies. So if there is no option to directly exchange one currency for another, it can be sold for XRP, and then XRP will be used to buy needed currency. 

The native token of XRP Ledger is also used to provide on-demand liquidity for Ripple’s RippleNet service — a global payment network of financial institutions. Until 2019 it existed as three separate products: xCurrent (a real-time settlement system), xRapid (a liquidity product), and xVia (payment application programming interface).