Ripple (payment protocol): Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
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Line 38: '''Ripple''' is a [[real-time gross settlement]] system, [[foreign exchange market|currency exchange]] and [[remittance]] network that is open to financial institutions worldwide and was created by [[Ripple Labs|Ripple Labs Inc.]], a US-based technology company. Released in 2012, Ripple is built upon a [[distributed computing|distributed]] [[open source software|open source]] [[Communication protocol|protocol]], and supports tokens representing [[fiat currency]], [[cryptocurrency]], [[commodity|commodities]], or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes.<ref name="virsutalcurrentcy">{{Cite web |date=November 12, 2013 |title=Ripple Labs Banks $3.5M for Open-Source Payments System and Virtual Currency |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/DJFVW00020131112e9bcncf1w |access-date=January 28, 2014 |website=The Wall Street Journal Pro |publisher=Dow Jones & Company |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks". The ledger employs the native cryptocurrency known as '''XRP'''. In December 2020, Ripple Labs and two of its executives were sued by the [[U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission]] (SEC) for selling XRP tokens, which the SEC classified as unregistered [[Security (finance)|securities]].<ref name="NYT Dec 2020" /> In July 2023, the court ruled that "XRP, as a digital token, is not in and of itself a 'contract, transaction, or scheme' that embodies the [[SEC v. W. J. Howey Co.|Howey]] requirements of an investment contract." == History == Ripple was conceived by [[Jed McCaleb]] and built by Arthur Britto and David Schwartz who then approached Ryan Fugger who had debuted {{Clarify|reason=Is there a word missing here? I assume that it wasn't Ryan himself who "debuted as a financial service".|date=November 2022}} in 2005 as a financial service to provide secure payment options to members of an online community via a global network.<ref name="peck2013">{{Cite web |last=Peck |first=Morgan |date=January 14, 2013 |title=Ripple Could Help or Harm Bitcoin |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org By 2018, over 100 banks had signed up, but most of them were only using Ripple's XCurrent messaging technology, while avoiding the XRP cryptocurrency due to its volatility problems.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Arnold |first=Martin |date=6 June 2018 |title=Ripple and Swift slug it out over cross-border payments |url=https://www.ft.com/content/631af8cc-47cc-11e8-8c77-ff51caedcde6 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190927142951/https://www.ft.com/content/631af8cc-47cc-11e8-8c77-ff51caedcde6 |archive-date=2019-09-27 |access-date=28 October 2019 |publisher=[[Financial Times]]}}</ref> Representatives of the [[Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication]] (SWIFT), whose market dominance is being challenged by Ripple, have argued that the scalability issues of Ripple and other blockchain solutions remain unsolved, confining them to bilateral and intra-bank applications.<ref name=":0" /> A Ripple executive acknowledged in 2018 that "We started out with your classic blockchain, which we love. But the feedback from the banks is you can’t put the whole world on a blockchain."<ref>{{Cite news |date=2018-06-13 |title=Banks unlikely to process payments with distributed ledgers for now, says Ripple |language=en |work=Reuters |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-ripple-idUSKBN1J92JG |access-date=2019-10-30}}</ref> Line 47: Ripple relies on a common shared ledger, which is a distributed database storing information about all Ripple accounts. Chris Larsen told the [[Stanford Graduate School of Business]] that the network was managed by a network of independent servers which compare their transaction records, and that servers could in theory belong to anyone, including banks or market makers.<ref name="clegsb">{{Cite news |last=Andrews |first=Edmund L. |date=September 24, 2013 |title=Chris Larsen: Money Without Borders |publisher=[[Stanford Graduate School of Business]] |url=http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/chris-larsen-money-without-borders |access-date=April 10, 2015}}</ref> Ripple validates accounts and balances instantly for payment transmission and delivers payment notification within a few seconds.<ref name="nortificationlatency">{{Cite news |last=Simonite |first=Tom |date=April 11, 2013 |title=Big-name investors back effort to build a better Bitcoin |work=MIT Technology Review |url=http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513606/big-name-investors-back-effort-to-build-a-better-bitcoin/ |access-date=January 26, 2014 |archive-date=March 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140308220625/http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513606/big-name-investors-back-effort-to-build-a-better-bitcoin/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Payments are irreversible, and there are no chargebacks.<ref name="norchargebacksfaxtcoexist">{{Cite web |last=Schwartz |first=Ariel |title=Bitcoin 2.0: Can Ripple Make Digital Currency Mainstream? |url=http://www.fastcoexist.com/2682032/bitcoin-20-can-ripple-make-digital-currency-mainstream |access-date=February 2, 2014 |publisher=Fast Company}}</ref> Ripple Labs continued as the primary ==Litigation== Line 59: On April 13, 2021, SEC Commissioner [[Hester Peirce|Hester M. Peirce]] published the Token Safe Harbor Proposal 2.0, which is ″intended to provide Initial Development Teams with a three-year time period within which they can facilitate participation in, and the continued development of, a functional or decentralized network, exempt from the registration provisions of the federal securities laws so long as certain conditions are met.″<ref name="Safe Harbor 2.0">{{cite web |last1=Peirce |first1=Hester |title=Token Safe Harbor Proposal 2.0 |url=https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/peirce-statement-token-safe-harbor-proposal-2.0 |website=Public Statement |publisher=U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission |access-date=11 July 2021}}</ref>
==Reception== |