With XRP value currently around $0.45, it might seem inconceivable to a lot of traditional investors that Ripple’s equity could end the year around $8 to $10 when even a lot less represents 300% to 1000% growth, (another common estimate) but that’s what some analysts are saying could happen with this cryptocurrency stock.
A piece today in Smartereum by Andreas Kaplan talks about optimist’s price predictions for Ripple, its XRP coin, and its system of payment protocols.
Calling ripple “an exciting feature-rich network,” Kaplan talks about its trajectory since its beginning in 2012 and how its digital coin X RP can sometimes be secondary in terms of outside interest to Ripple payment protocols based on a gateway medium that can help banks to trade more easily.
“The Ripple technology is, in fact, more widely known for its digital payment protocol than for being a cryptocurrency,” Kaplan writes. “Ripple functions in a decentralized platform that fosters money transfers in any form. It is open source and peer to peer, and can work with several exchanges and currencies, physical or crypto, such as US dollars, Yen, Litecoin, and Bitcoin .. In Ripple, anyone can sign up and open a gateway that authorizes that person to be the middleman for exchanging currencies.”
There’s also an interesting idea, attributed by Kaplan to Ripple chief Cryptographer David Schwartz, that talks about the pending popularity of various digital banking systems: and that brings us to a kind of lay analysis of Ripple that explains why it might be poised to jump so high this winter or next year.
Think about PayPal, the household name in digital transactions. We use Paypal a lot, and it has vaulted into the stratosphere on the strength of its fintech utility. How is Ripple different?
In an explanatory video, Ivan on Tech talks about the difference between something like PayPal and a technology like Ripple.
PayPal, Ivan explains, is ‘front end’ – and if you think about it, although PayPal does allow instantaneous international payments, it only does it after vetting specific bank accounts. So it’s more of an interface service that relies on traditional bank verification to offer its lightning-fast transactions between parties.
Ripple, he points out, is much different – it’s a back end technology that eliminates the need for those cumbersome banking processes. Take this a step further, and think about how Wells Fargo offices in the U.S. are still relying on traditional Western Union transfers. Then you’ll see what some analysts are crowing about – the ginormous potential of something like Ripple to come along and make all of that work unnecessary. It also gives you a window into why so many people are saying that Ripple is currentlty undervalued – while others are warning of a continued cryptocurrency bear market.
For this popular crypto, at least, what’s really exciting about the company isn’t just a token or a coin – it’s the protocols through which Ripple helps its banking customers to innovate, and that could be worth quite a lot in 2019.
