XRP, also known as Ripple, seems to be the player that always attracts attention during each round of bull markets. Its origin is quite interesting; as early as 2004, Ryan Fugger proposed the relevant concept, but initially, it involved trading through digital IOUs or credit, rather than in the form of cryptocurrency.
It wasn't until Bitcoin's success that Ripple launched a blockchain-based payment network—RippleNet—in 2012. However, it was quickly targeted by regulators. In 2015, it was fined $700,000 for failing to comply with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) regulations. In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple, alleging that XRP was an unregistered security, which forced trading platforms like Coinbase to delist it. In the following years, the legal battle became almost commonplace for Ripple. However, Ripple did not back down; in 2021, it argued that the SEC had not clearly defined whether XRP was a security, using 'fair notice' as a defense, and the court made several favorable rulings for them, such as the March 2021 ruling that $XRP has utility. Nonetheless, the litigation has continued, and the game between the SEC and Ripple has never ceased. Until July 2023, the court ruled that Ripple's public sale of XRP to exchanges was not illegal, while sales to institutions were deemed illegal, which led to XRP being relisted on exchanges. In October of the same year, the SEC withdrew its charges against Ripple executives and canceled the 2024 trial; however, XRP's troubles did not end there.
In August 2024, Judge Torres ruled that Ripple must pay a $125 million fine, which is far less than the nearly $2 billion proposed by the SEC, and the court temporarily decided not to enforce the fine while awaiting the appeal results. However, the SEC was still unwilling to back down and filed an appeal, while Ripple firmly asserted that the SEC's loss proved XRP's status as a non-security has been legislatively effective. Amid various lawsuits, Bitwise applied to trade XRP shares in an ETF, and it is not hard to see the differences between XRP and other blockchain tokens from these aspects.
In addition to the ongoing lawsuits, the application scenarios of XRP and its token itself differ significantly from those of well-known cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, and SOL. In terms of application scenarios, XRP is primarily used for peer-to-peer payments. Traditional remittance methods are complex, while XRP can solve the complicated processes and high fees of banks, with confirmation times of just 3-5 seconds, often used in the fields of cross-border e-commerce and remittances.
In terms of ledger, XRP uses the Ripple protocol to maintain a decentralized distributed ledger. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, which record transactions based on 'blocks', it consists of multiple independent ledgers that are updated and verified after each transaction. Although it is decentralized, it employs a trusted validation network, which actually has certain centralized characteristics. Ripple itself holds a large amount of XRP tokens and has significant control.
