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History Of Ripple Events

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Evidently, Ripple has developed to become one of the success stories in the crypto market, with several significant partnerships, developments and a large community behind it. Yet, Ripple still remains a major controversial asset within this crypto space. Whilst this is not a comprehensive analysis, in this Ripple events piece we will try to help you understand what led to the platform’s success by learning from its history and why it’s still a subject of debate. 

Let’s dive right into the platform’s history. 

Ripple Events: Background 

XRP was launched by Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen, and Arthur Britto back in 2012. Nonetheless, the events leading to this day, date back many years and provide a good explanation regarding the coin’s background. 

Ripplepay

Ryan Fugger, founded the Ripple Project (Ripplepay.com), the predecessor of the current XRP ledger. This was back in 2004 before Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin’s whitepaper in 2008. Ripplepay.com was launched in 2005, and the site described it as, “A financial service that allows users to extend credit lines to their friends, family, and associates and make payments in traditional and online currencies.”

Ripple Events

At that time, Jed McCaleb, the former owner of Mt Gox, and the current co-founder and CTO at Stellar Foundation, was working on the eDonkey Network (a decentralized peer-to-peer file-sharing network). Nonetheless, he started developing an interest to create a digital currency system (the XRP Ledger) on May 2011, together with David Schwartz (the current Chief Cryptographer at Ripple) and Arthur Britto (the current Chief Strategist at Ripple). 

Ripple Events

Chris Larsen, the current Executive Chairman at Ripple, who had co-founded several silicon valley tech start-ups joined Jed in 2012, and together with Jessie Powell, the Founder and current CEO of Kraken, reached out to Fugger to discuss this concept. 

After several discussion meetings, Fugger agreed to pass over ownership of Ripplepay to them. In September 2012, they went on to found OpenCoin Inc., although Jed McCaleb left less than a year later due to an internal dispute. 

From OpenCoin To Ripple Labs To Ripple 

The team then began building on OpenCoin as they sought to enable instant, direct transfer of payments between two parties in any currency. This would disrupt the existing payment system, by reducing the transaction fees and time delays. Other members include Roger Ver, Andressen Horowitz, and they helped to provide an initial capital injection to the project. 

Ripple Events

OpenCoin was rebranded Ripple Labs in September 2013, then to Ripple in October 2015. Since then, the interchangeability in the terminology used to describe the company, the network, the XRP Ledger and XRP itself has caused confusion to those new and old in this space, which has fueled the centralization argument of its detractors. 

Nonetheless, recent events, such as the launch of a community-based project for an independent symbol for XRP, have helped make the distinction clear. 

Ripple Events: Launch Date 

Ripple was officially launched in 2012, and in less than 6 years, the platform has grown and managed to establish itself as a major player in the rapidly growing crypto industry. The Ripple protocol has been adopted massively by global companies in different industries, especially financial institutions. 

2015 and 2016 marked a significant period for the platform because this is when it opened offices in Sydney, London, and Luxembourg. 

Later in September 2016, Ripple launched the Global Payments Steering Group. At this time, GPSG’s responsibility was to oversee the creation and maintenance of Ripple payment transaction rules, formalize standards for activity using the technology and other actions to promote the implementation of Ripple payment capabilities as the network continued to grow. 

The participants of airdrops to forum created significant interest and ‘’buzz around the platform, and even the likes of Eric Voorhees and Vitalik Buterin were seen posting their XRP addresses in the thread. Nonetheless, several critics used this chance to challenge the newly launched project. 

Also, early Bitcoin investors shared concerns that Ripple would dominate the crypto industry thus affecting their investments, and went further to offer bribes of over $500 (5BTC at that time) to say that Ripple and XRP were a scam. This became the topic of debate for long, and many were confused as to whether Ripple was genuine. 

Nonetheless, as the Ripple community expanded, it created the XRPTalk, which spanned off from Bitcointalk, and mainly included members that saw Ripple’s potential. 

The XRPTalk forum was the main catalyst behind the growth of the XRP community, but it was replaced by XRPChat, which has grown to become one of the largest in the Cryptosphere. 

The group is also very active across several social media platforms. 

New Features 

As it continued to grow, Ripple added Escrow and Payment Channels, which helped boost its scalability and performance. The new features enable companies to adopt the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL), and the Interledger Protocol (ILP). This allows them to benefit from XRP technology, as they experience faster and cheaper cross-border payments. 

More Companies Adopted

Santander became the first bank in the United Kingdom to use Ripple for cross-border payments in 2016. By April 2017, Ripple had signed 10 new banks, including Axis Bank and Yes Bank in India, Akbank in Turkey and BBVA bank in Spain. Additionally, a 47-bank consortium from Japan joined in March. Moreover, the other 57 big customers from America, and other regions joined the platform. 

Ripple also received a boost from Kraken in May 2017, when the exchange stated that it would add four different XRP trading pairs, including XRP/CAD, XRP/JPY, XRP/EUR, and XRP/USD. This propelled the platform to greater heights and attracted more users and loyalists who saw potential in the coin.  

Final Thought On Ripple Events

While many refuse to accept the importance and potential of Ripple, the evidence above clearly shows that it should be considered a digital currency like any other. Since its launch in 2012, the platform has continued to improve its technology by adding new features and has been adopted by many companies in the financial sector. 

Ripple technology has enabled faster and cheaper cross-border payments, something that has been a challenge since the blockchain technology was introduced to the world. 

As the Ripple continues to grow, it remains to be seen what the future holds for the platform and its cryptocurrency, both of which have so far managed to spark several debates. 

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