10/01/14 23:59 # accounts 57,550
Why Ripple is a Better Investment Than Plain Alt Coins
It seems like everybody and his dog is trying to create a new digital currency to compete with Bitcoin these days. Considering how successful Bitcoin has been in such a short time, and how much money it has made for people who got in early, it is hardly surprising that other developers are trying to emulate some of this success – or that investors are closely watching all of these so called ‘alt coin’ for profitable high growth investment opportunities.
If this whole subject is completely new to you then here is the briefest, simplest summary I can manage: Bitcoin and the other alt coins are ‘cryptocurrencies’, which use peer to peer connections and cryptographic keys to manage, track and secure transactions without the need for central banks.
Most of the new alt coins have little new to offer, and are highly likely to have a short lifespan. But there are some developers building on the original Bitcoin innovation with their own, truly innovative systems which have something extra to offer. Although the market and technology is constantly changing, my top pick for the best alt coin investment in 2014 at the moment is Ripple and its XRP currency.
In actual fact Ripple is much more than a ‘cryptocurrency’ or ‘alt coin’ – it is positioning itself as a low cost currency trading platform and international payment system. It uses a peer to peer cryptocurrency to acheive this. The way the system works is that if you wanted to exchange British Pounds for US dollars you would buy XRP (the system’s own currency) with your GBP, and then sell them for US dollars. Because the distributed nature of the system, which is run on the computers of the community of users themselves, the costs for doing this are lower than traditional currency exchange. Other alt coins can also be built on and traded through the Ripple platform. For example, the NoFiatCoin is being launched – a new currency backed by precious metals which will appeal to ‘gold bugs’ and other members of the investment community who have long opposed fiat currency and lamented the end of the gold standard.