Welcome to the XRP Portal – the home for institutional investors, liquidity providers and those interested in learning more about XRP.
XRP is an independent digital asset, native to the Ripple Consensus Ledger. With proven governance and the fastest transaction confirmation of its kind, XRP is the most efficient settlement option for financial institutions and liquidity providers seeking global reach, accessibility and fast settlement finality for interbank flows.
While XRP is not required to transact on Ripple*, it is uniquely positioned to create more competitive foreign exchange (FX) markets for cross-border payments. For individuals interested in buying and trading XRP, please visit the How to Buy XRP page. To view market capitalization, 24-hour payment volume and other data about XRP, visit Ripple Charts.
*Each transaction destroys a negligible amount of XRP as a network fee to prevent spam. In the ILP-enabled version of Ripple, this network fee can be denominated in local currencies.
XRP’s Role on Ripple as a Bridge Currency
Ripple enables banks to settle cross-border payments in real time, with end-to-end transparency, and at lower costs. Banks choose to either provide liquidity for FX themselves or source it from third-parties.
As Ripple adoption grows, so do the number of currencies and counterparties. Liquidity providers need to maintain accounts with each counterparty for each currency – a capital- and time-intensive endeavor that spreads liquidity thin. Further, some transactions, such as exotic currency trades, will require multiple trading parties, who each layer costs to the transaction. Thin liquidity and many intermediary trading parties make competitive pricing challenging.
Liquidity providers can bridge any currencies directly through XRP in a trade. Similar to USD in today’s currency market, XRP enables liquidity concentration around fewer pairs, creating order book thickness and competitive FX rates, especially for exotic currency pairs. Unlike USD, trading through XRP does not require bank accounts, service fees, counterparty risk, or additional operational costs. By using XRP, liquidity providers can specialize in certain currency corridors, reduce operational costs, and ultimately, offer more competitive FX pricing.
Why Ripple Distributes XRP
The creators of Ripple set out to build a more efficient distributed payment network.
Bitcoin and alt-coin systems use mining to confirm transactions and create coins. Mining consumes large amounts of electrical energy, as miners compete with each other to generate coins.
Ripple’s method of confirmation, called consensus, doesn’t need mining; therefore, it requires comparatively negligible computing power, confirmation time adapts to network latency, and transactions are immediately irreversible once confirmed.
Because Ripple’s architecture does not require mining, the creators of Ripple had a choice: distribute XRP exclusively via mining or diversify the distribution methods.
Distributing value is a powerful way to incentivize certain behaviors. Bitcoin’s mechanism, for example, led to an explosion of processing power devoted to bitcoin mining. Our goal in distributing XRP is to incentivize actions that build trust, utility and liquidity in the network.
If we distribute XRP with these goals in mind, over time we expect to see an increase in demand for XRP that more than offsets the additional supply we inject into the market. Said another way, we will engage in distribution strategies that we expect will result in a stable and strengthening XRP exchange rate against other currencies. To this end, we currently plan to distribute XRP primarily through business development deals, incentives to liquidity providers who offer tighter spreads for payments, and selling XRP to institutional buyers interested in investing in XRP. If market conditions permit, we expect our company to hold approximately 50 billion XRP by the end of 2021. This schedule is indicative and discretionary.