Ripple Labs' Grand Plan to Build a Global Payment Protocol. It’s no coincidence that Ripple Labs was formed in 2012 to be a part of a payments revolution. In 2013, the price of bitcoin hit a high that many had not thought possible, creating a sentiment that new and distributed technologies could change the global financial order on a fundamental level.
This enthusiasm is the driving force behind Ripple, and one of the reasons that it has already raised $6.5m in angel and seed funding from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company says it has raised capital in its early stages because it aims to build the best global payment protocol, and it needs to hire talented people to do so. “You need a big team,” explained Ripple CEO Chris Larsen. “If this is really going to be a global protocol, it needs that [team].” He added: “In the bitcoin world I’d say a lot of that value is going into mining. Consensus The concept of bitcoin mining is what has made that network itself so powerful. Removing barriers. Ripple Labs. Ripple. Beyond Bitcoin: A Guide to the Most Promising Cryptocurrencies. Just as the success of Facebook helped spawn endless clones, Bitcoin’s arrival on the big stage comes with an assortment of digital currencies, known as “altcoins,” riding on Satoshi’s coattails.
As the saying goes, a rising tide raises all ships. With Bitcoin up over 5000 percent since the beginning of the year, the altcoin market is booming. The price of Litecoin, what some consider silver to bitcoin’s gold, has traded as high as $20, up nearly 1000 percent in the last six months. Is there room for more than one sheriff in town? Successful competitors found a way to relevantly differentiate themselves. Litecoin: the little brother Price at time of writing: $28.35 Market Cap: $503,102,328 Consistent with its name, Litecoin is essentially Bitcoin-lite and is the second most valuable altcoin. Unlike social networks, Litecoin benefits from its similarities to Bitcoin because of familiarity. Today, Litecoin maintains its status as a destination for Bitcoin castaways. Peercoin: Actually green.
Ripple (payment protocol) Ripple is a payment system, currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple Labs. It is built upon a distributed, open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called ripples (XRP). The Ripple network purports to enable "secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks". It supports tokens representing fiat currency (dollars, yen, etc.), cryptocurrency (bitcoin, litecoin, etc.), commodity or other unit of value (frequent flier miles, mobile minutes, etc.).[1][2] At its core, Ripple is based around a shared, public database or ledger.[3] In addition to balances, the ledger holds information about offers to buy or sell currencies and assets, creating the first distributed exchange. Participants in the network agree to changes in the ledger via a process called consensus which is reached every 2–5 seconds. Chris Larsen is currently CEO of Ripple Labs Inc.[19] Adding Trustlines and Rippling The Vice President of the St.