Top 9 Frequently Asked Questions About Ripple and XRP

The market interest about Ripple and XRP has reached a fever pitch, and naturally, people have questions about the company, the digital asset, how it’s used and where to buy it.

In order to clear up any misconceptions about Ripple and XRP, we’ve published answers to nine of the most frequently asked questions that the Ripple team has received. This list will be updated regularly as news and new developments unfold.

1. How do I buy XRP?
XRP is available for purchase on more than 60 digital asset exchanges worldwide, many of which are listed on this page. Please note that Ripple does not endorse, recommend, or make any representations with respect to the gateways and exchanges that appear on that page. Every exchange has a different process for purchasing XRP.

If you’ve already purchased XRP and have a question about your purchase, then please reach out to the exchange directly. In order to maintain healthy XRP markets, it’s a top priority for Ripple to have XRP listed on top digital asset exchanges, making it broadly accessible worldwide. Ripple has dedicated resources to the initiative so you can expect ongoing progress toward creating global liquidity.

2. What is the difference between XRP, XRP Ledger, and Ripple?
XRP is the digital asset native to XRP Ledger. The XRP Ledger is an open-source, distributed ledger. Ripple is a privately held company.

3. How many financial institutions have adopted XRP?
As of May 2018, MoneyGram, MercuryFX, IDT, Cuallix, Western Union, Cambridge Global Payments, Currencies Direct and Viamericas— eight major payment providers — have publicly announced their pilot use of XRP in payment flows through xRapid to provide liquidity solutions for their cross-border payments. Ripple has a growing pipeline of financial institutions that are also interested in using XRP in their payment flows.

4. How secure is XRP? Do I have to use exchanges?
The XRP Ledger is where XRP transactions occur and are recorded. The software that maintains the Ledger is open source and executes continually on a distributed network of servers operated by a variety of organizations. It’s an open-source code base that actively develops and maintains the ledger. Since XRP Ledger’s inception, we’ve worked to make the Ledger more resilient and resistant to a single point of failure through decentralization, a process that continues today.

To purchase XRP you must use an exchange or gateway and/or have a digital wallet. Ripple does not endorse, recommend, or make any representations with respect to gateways, exchanges, or wallets, but please see the list of exchanges that offer XRP here.

5. Is the XRP Ledger centralized?
This is a top misconception with the XRP Ledger. Centralization implies that a single entity controls the Ledger. While Ripple contributes to the open-source code of the XRP Ledger, we don’t own, control, or administer the XRP Ledger. The XRP Ledger is decentralized. If Ripple ceased to exist, the XRP Ledger would continue to exist.

Ripple has an interest in supporting the XRP Ledger for several reasons, including contributing to the longer-term strategy to encourage the use of XRP as a liquidity tool for financial institutions. Decentralization of the XRP Ledger is an ongoing process that started right at its inception. In May 2017, we publicly shared our decentralization strategy.

First, we announced plans to continue to diversify validators on the XRP Ledger, which we expanded to 55 validator nodes in July 2017. We also shared plans to add attested validators to Unique Node Lists (UNLs), and announced over the course of 2017 and 2018, for every two attested third-party validating nodes that meet the objective criteria mentioned above, we will remove one validating node operated by Ripple, until no entity operates a majority of trusted nodes on the XRP Ledger.

We believe these efforts will increase the XRP Ledger’s enterprise-grade resiliency and robustness, leading to XRP’s continued adoption as the best digital asset for payments.

6. Which wallet should I use?
Ripple does not endorse, recommend, or make any representations with respect to digital wallets. It’s advisable to always conduct your own due diligence before trusting money to any third party or third-party technology.

7. Does the price volatility of XRP impact whether financial institutions adopt xRapid?
No. Ripple has a stable cache of financial institutions that are interested in piloting xRapid. Financial institutions who use xRapid don’t need to hold XRP for an extended period of time. What’s more, XRP settles in three to five seconds, which means financial institutions are exposed to limited volatility during the course of the transaction.

8. Can Ripple freeze XRP transactions? Are they able to view or monitor transactions?
No one can freeze XRP, including Ripple. All transactions on XRP Ledger are publicly viewable.

9. Can Ripple create more XRP?
No. Ripple the company didn’t create XRP; 100 billion XRP was created before the company was formed, and after Ripple was founded, the creators of XRP gifted a substantial amount of XRP to the company.