By Ariel Schwartz
It has been a nail-biting year for people who hold Bitcoins, an open-source digital currency that has quickly gained traction in the tech community. Last June, Bitcoins were worth $5. By April 2013, they were up to $266. Then they dropped to $70 in April. According to the Wall Street Journal, they were back up to $108 by May 7th. Bitcoin is volatile. We know that much. It’s also vulnerable. Mt. Gox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange (where users go to exchange Bitcoins for other currency)--was recently hacked multiple times, shutting down the site temporarily.
But here’s the thing about open-source currencies: they’re open to improvement. Ripple, a platform that just received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others, has created both an alternative to Bitcoin and a distributed currency exchange for Bitcoiners (and others) who aren’t comfortable using only Ripple’s currency, known as XRP.
Read the rest here.
People continue to misunderstand ripple. It isn't a digital currency to complete with Bitcoin, it is a payment protocol for transferring fiat money. The XRP is used by the system to facilitate dollar transfers. Bitcoin is about creating an alternative to the dollar. Ripple is about making dollars easier to transfer.
ReplyDeleteThey are two completely different things.