The buzz about cryptocurrency has made it one of the most sought-after business investment in recent years. From Bitcoin to Ethereum, Litecoin to Ripple, investors are investing heavily in cryptocurrencies to increase their financial power and freedom.
However, some investors find it difficult to invest in Ripple due to lack of adequate information that can guide and help them make a wise investment decision. The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive guide that will assist you to make the best investment decision.
Recommended Reading – Best Crypto Currency Apps
Now, let’s start from what Ripple is and some platforms where you can trade in this cryptocurrency.
What is Ripple?
Ripple refers to a technology that serves the dual purpose of a payment network for digital financial transactions as well as a digital currency known as XRP. It was co-founded by Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen who are the CTO and CEO respectively. It was released in 2012.
As a cryptocurrency, Ripple acts as a medium currency to other digital currencies. It treats all currencies equally without discriminating against any currency. This makes it easy for people to make transactions with any currency of their choice while Ripple acts as the middleman.
Along with Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ripple appreciates in value frequently. Ripple and other digital currencies are reaping great reward from people’s desire to use blockchain more than before. That is one of the many reasons why the digital currency is a good investment option for savvy investors. The below chart shows the growth of XRP in recent times:
Is It Worth To Buy Ripple ~ $2?
Considering the recent rally of XRP (December 2017), are you in a FOMO, and not sure if you need to buy it right now or not? If yes, then following can be a good consideration for you:
# Great Team:
CEO Brad Garling house is a former CEO of file sharing service Hightail, and was a senior VP at Yahoo for 5 years. Since its launch, Ripple has raised almost US$100 million in funding, and now has over 135 employees.
# Investors:
Blue chip companies like Google Ventures, Accenture, CME Ventures, Standard Chartered etc… have invested in Ripple.
# Solid Technology:
People are comparing speed of Ripple with MASTER / VISA, however we are talking about Ripple with respect to SWIFT only. Unlike BTC, XRP can process transactions much faster and at a much cheaper transaction fee. It has the ability to process as much as 1500 transactions per second as compared to BTC’s 16 TPS.
# Replacement for SWIFT:
Internationally, XRP is being pushed as a potential replacement to the old SWIFT system, which is at present, used by most of the banks for international fund transfers. Currently, SWIFT processes around US $5 trillion per day. With its faster transfer times and much lower fees, Ripple has a chance to take over that role.
# Big Global Partnerships:
US Bank American Express, UK Bank Santander, Standard Chartered, UBS, Japanese financial service company SBI Holding, Axis Bank, Rak Bank etc… have partnered with Ripple. 15 of the world’s top 50 banks have worked with Ripple in some or the other form.
What to Look Out in 2018 for Ripple?
# More banks across the globe continue to partner with Ripple for international transactions and Ripple might replace SWIFT
# There is a very high possibility that Coinbase will add Ripple, we can see that is a recent leak of Coinbase Beta video:
How to Buy Ripple?
As one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency and the third most traded after Bitcoin and Ethereum, many investors are ready to buy this digital currency. However, the question of where to buy the digital coin is one of the commonest questions that potential investors ask.
Binance exchange is one of the best place to buy Ripple! It has good volumes, low transaction fees (when paid with BNB) and good charts to study!
To buy Ripple, it is important that you have a ripple wallet where you can store XRP. When you have found a wallet of your choice, you need a good platform where you can buy the coin. The good news is there are many online mobile wallets where you can buy and keep Ripple coins.
Best Ripple (XRP) Desktop & Android Wallet
A quick review of some of the best ripple wallets, which will equip you with the necessary information to make the best decision.
GateHub – The Best Desktop Wallet for Ripple
GateHub is one of the best ripple desktop wallets you can trust. It is the official wallet of this digital currency. You can conduct all forms of transactions, buying and selling of the coin on Gatehub in fiat money such as EUR or USD. You can as well store your coins in the wallet.
Buying Ripple coins on Gatehub is very simple. You only need to sign up on the official website of the wallet, activate your account by verifying your KYC and fund your wallet with either EUR or USD to purchase the coin.
To buy Ripple, the Wallet page will reveal your Ripple wallet and the balance. You can then use the Receive option to request for payment into your account.
On Gatehub, you can have real-time stats and the current market trends before you buy or sell XRP on the platform.
Pros of Gatehub
- It is the official wallet of Ripple.
- You can fund your account with FIAT money.
- Very easy to set up.
Cons of Gatehub
- It sometimes has a maxledger
Fee Structure of Gatehub
Below is the fee structure of Gatehub:
Poloniex – Best Ripple Wallet App for Android Users
Poloniex is considered by many investors to be the best platform for trading Ripple. The cryptocurrency exchanger allows you to make your purchase with Ethereum or Bitcoin. If you want to store your XRP, you can also store it in Poloniex Wallet; it can be considered as one of the best XRP wallet apps for android users.
After signing up on Poloniex, you will be asked to verify your account. The verification process is a bit simple and straightforward. Once the verification is complete, you can proceed with your purchase if you have Bitcoin or Ethereum in your wallet.
Just go to the XRP market as shown below:
You can then buy whatever amount you want:
When you are through with your purchase, the coin will be added to your wallet shortly.
Pros of Poloniex
Some pros of Poloniex are:
- You can trade many altcoins.
- It offers you high liquidity.
- Two-factor verification for increased security.
Cons of Poloniex
These are some of the cons of this wallet:
- The site loads slowly.
- Pumps and dumps are common.
- It doesn’t support FIAT money like the US dollar.
- Hacked in 2014 (but now it is considered very safe)
Fee Structure of Poloniex
Below is the fee structure of Poloniex:
CoinPayments
CoinPayments is a good wallet that allows you to store XRP with some other 70 cryptocurrencies. In addition to being a wallet, CoinPayments is also a payment gateway that can be used by merchants to conduct business transactions in cryptocurrencies. In June 2017, due to a bug in CoinPayments system, several users lost their ripple tokens.
Pros of CoinPayments
- It is a payment gateway.
- Good for storing multiple cryptocurrencies.
Cons of CoinPayments
- You may lose your money to a bug in the system.
Fee Structure of CoinPayments
Below is the fee structure of CoinPayments:
Ledger Nano S – The Safest Crypto Wallet
Ledger Nano S is a hardware wallet that provides the best security for digital coins. You can leverage the high degree of security it offers to buy and store Ripple coins for a longer duration without the security risk of most online wallets.
If you have some other cryptocurrencies aside from Ripple, you can equally store it in your hardware wallet. Other altcoins that are supported by this hardware wallet are Eth, BTC, Dash, ETC, ZCash, and Stratis.
Pros of Ledger Nano S
- Very safe.
- Your security information is properly kept.
- You can conduct any transaction on the platform.
- You can use it to hold different cryptocurrencies.
Cons of Ledger Nano S
- It lacks passphrase
- It can easily be lost.
- You can’t download it since it is hardware.
Important Note – If you are transferring XRP from one wallet to another, then make sure that you mention the Destination Tag, else you might lose your Ripple coins.
With this information, if you want to trade in Ripple, you can check out these XRP wallets and choose the one that appeals to you the best!
Are you an XRP trader and prefer any other XRP wallet? Please comment below which Ripple Wallet do you use and would recommend to others!
I’ve been trading in Ripple for a while now and it’s been giving good returns. When I started, I was using Coinpayment to store my Ripple. It was nice and I loved the payment gateway until I lost my money to a bug and I’d to switch to Gatehub. I’ve not experienced any issue with this wallet and so I can recommend it to anyone who needs a trusted Ripple wallet which is very easy to set up and manage.
I use Gatehub but my ETH transfers taking more than 2 days. Would you know why? I am not the only person with this problem. How do you trade ripple on Gatehub otherwise? (changelly stopped ripple transactions, which is what i used first)…
Yeah, Ripple doesn’t have many investors now cause there is not much information about it to guide interested investors. When I heard about it, I was skeptical at first until I gave in. Now, I don’t regret that decision. As an investor in Ripple, I strongly recommend using poloniex to store your Ripple. This is because it offers you high liquidity and allows you trade different altcoins.
I’ve been looking for a wallet that can store as.many coins as possible and I’ve just found coimpayments. I only use Electrum until now which is good for bitcoin
Coimpayments seem to be the best for me right now. Low transaction fees and you can even put in as many crypto coins as possible. It’s good that other companies follow suit in delivering service like them.
Best wallet i’ve found is Binance, easily trade the XRP to loads of smaller coins if a trade looks good on the chats and the fee’s are absolutely minimal!
What’ is the best paper wallet for ripple in your guys opinion? Preferably on generated offline.
Hi,
How are you? Your blog seems quite useful. Thank you for sharing such info.
I want to know more about Gate Hub. I happen to open an account in the same. I have few below doubts. I would appreciate if you can help me.
1) While opening the same I choose Ripple as my Primary Wallet. .I want to know was I right in choosing Ripple ar Primary Wallet?
2) It is still showing me written as “pending” on Primary Wallet. What I need to do. I have given them my passport copy already. And its almost 10 days have passed since I open the same.
3) Gate hub is asking minimum balance of 20 Ripple to be maintained if we want to initiate any transaction. Does this mean that I will loose these 20 Ripple when I will close this account. For now 20 ripple is nothing, but in future it can be some amount of money.
4) In case if I choose Ledger Nano S, would there be any way to recover currency in case I loose this carelessly.
It will be great If you can share your mail id. I am new investor in this market, so have many doubts.
Please guide.
Thank you
Hello Chandra,
1 & 2 – what is the current status; it does it does take a little long
3 – most of the exchanges / wallets do have minimum transaction limits; it doesn’t mean you would lose 20XRP; but it rather means that you can do a transaction only with minimum 20 XRP.
SO say at the end if you have 21 XRP, you can transfer them all and empty your wallet; but if you have 19 XRP, then you cannot.
4 – Yes, you can recover the coins of your ledger using the 24 phrase recovery seed which gets initiated when the ledger is booted for the 1st time.
Hope this helps!
This article makes a huge mistake of confusing “wallet” and “exchange”.
A wallet is a cryptographic key to which funds can be attached. It can also represent a program used to manage this key and offer features such as making transactions to send and receive funds. The Ledged Nano S indeed is a wallet and one of the most secure out there.
GateHub, Poloniex and CoinPayments are not wallet, but exchanges. Trading softwares if you’d like. It is true that they all include a wallet, but this wallet is not stored on a machine you own. The key for your wallet is stored in the cloud, on the provider’s machine which is a central point very likely to get attacked due to the high number of wallet keys stored there. For this reason, you should not hold any coin on these wallets for long-term holding purposes. They are great and convenient which make them suitable for trading and making transactions, but any fund stored there is at risk and should be moved on a Ledger Nano S for long-term storage.
Hello Hiestaa,
I am sorry to hear that you found confusion between the wallet and exchange & I totally agree with your explanation.
I hope our readers, do read your comment and get more clarity! 🙂
Hello All, thank you for this information and the great responses. I am hoping to get some help here.
I had some ETH on Kraken and wanted to switch it to Bitcoin. I used Changelly to make the swap. I submitted the exchange well over 48 hours ago. The ETH has been removed from my Kraken account, on Changelly (3 steps for a complete transaction) it shows that the payment was received (1), the amount was exchanged (2) but it has been “sending to your wallet” (3) for over 48 hours.
I have tried contacting them multiple times and submitted multiple inquires and have not received a single response. I am not sure what to do from here and what I can do to correct this. I know that if you lose your wallet info, etc. that your coins are gone, but I have all of the information (wallet addresses, transaction ID, etc.) from all sides so that is not the case.
Is there a way to cancel this transaction and get my ETH back? What options do I have to correct this? Or what can anyone suggest I try to get this corrected ASAP. I really appreciate the feedback and assistance! Thank you!
Hello All,
I am hoping for a little help… I bought Ripple with Bitcoin via Kraken. My account shows the current rate for my Ripple coins as $2.767, but the current market rate for Ripple is over $3. Why does it not show the rate at current market rate? Is there something I am not understanding? The pricing I am providing is in USD. Thank you for your help!