In this day and age, everyone (and their grandmother) is familiar with Bitcoin, the flagship bearer and indisputable king of cryptocurrencies. There are Bitcoin ATM machines in every country's major cities and the overall adoption rates are staggering, even among the non-tech-savvy crowds. Despite claiming all the spotlight, there are many other cryptocurrencies out there that do exactly what Bitcoin does and in addition introduce a wide array of improvements.
Today, we'll be looking at one of them - Ripple. However, we'll skip over the full intro to Ripple coin and dive right into the nitty and gritty by putting it side by side to Bitcoin and making a thorough comparison. With that in mind, what are the main differences between the two?
Ripple also goes by the name of XRP
Just as Ethereum has a handle that goes by ETH and Bitcoin is known for its BTC acronym, Ripple is sometimes abbreviated as XRP. Ironically, Ripple is the name of the company that's behind it, but in practice, that's what many people use to refer to it. In terms of crypto popularity, it's right behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether.
The differences in a nutshell
As popular as it may be, one of Bitcoin's shortcomings is its poor performance when it comes to its transactions per second (TPS) speed. Until a transaction goes through, minutes could pass, an eternity in technological terms. On the other hand, Ripple can process transactions in a matter of seconds - an astronomical difference. Bitcoin's high transaction costs are also a deterrent for many.
The underlying technology
Bitcoin is based on what's called the blockchain technology, a decentralized system that facilitates digital asset transactions and record-keeping. In exchange for a bit of computer power, anyone with a strong enough computer can join a mining network and mine the cryptocurrency. Ripple's system, on the other hand, offers no mining opportunities. However, it is faster as a result. For the sake of comparison, keep in mind that Bitcoin has a limited fixed supply of 21 million coins, there will never be any more. While Ripple's numbers sit at massive total of 100 billion coins, these are all pre-mined.
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