Bitcoin rival Ripple is suddenly sitting on many billions of dollars worth of currency

by Dramelin 8:00 AM 0 comments

Blockchain start-up Ripple is in a precarious position for a 5-year-old company.
The business is still in its very early days but suddenly has billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.
Ripple, which built a digital payments network for real-time financial transactions, is also the creator and biggest owner of Ripple XRP, a digital currency that has increased in value by 40 times this year.
There`s a total of 100 billion XRP in existence, each priced at about 26 cents.
The $26 billion of total value is second among cryptocurrencies, behind bitcoin, which is valued at $41 billion.
Ripple owns about 61 percent — or $16 billion worth — of XRP.
If that were factored into the company`s valuation, Ripple would be worth more than all but four U.
start-ups — Uber, Airbnb, Palantir and WeWork.
XRP is surging alongside bitcoin and ether as well as smaller digital currencies like dash and monero.
They`re all benefiting from the surging interest in blockchain, a distributed electronic ledger that makes all transactions trackable.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies on the market, XRP is tied to — and majority-owned by — a single company.