Buy XRP (Ripple) in New Zealand

No. XRP and Ripple are completely different.

XRP often gets confused with Ripple because of the connection between the two. This is because Ripple was established by the same people who created the ledger and cryptocurrency.

Ripple is a for-profit company that develops software for fast global financial settlements. Whereas, XRP is a decentralised cryptocurrency that was built for fast and cost-efficient cross-border payments. Ripple utilises XRP to facilitate payments on its network.

The Ripple network, or Ripple Labs, is a private enterprise that provides solutions for cheap and seamless transactions for financial institutions around the world.

Ripple is a global payment network that was created to solve the pain points of traditional financial services. The international payment system is notoriously slow and costly since it requires the involvement of multiple intermediaries that charge fees for their long procedures. With XRP, Ripple can act as a middleman between two parties to settle transactions within seconds.

Ripple utilised XRP and XRP Ledger in its products, xRapid, xCurrent, and xVia, to settle cross-border transactions, whether it’s traditional money or cryptocurrencies. Eventually, the company unified them into RippleNet.

Ripple’s rebranding widened the usage of XRP, through its on-demand liquidity. With this service, you can send low-cost payments instantaneously without needing to pre-fund the destination account.

The XRP Ledger was first developed by three developers – David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto.

In 2011, Bitcoin caught the attention of David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, who found its sustainability to be an issue. They saw mining to be a wasteful process, so they worked on creating a more sustainable blockchain system for sending value. The result is the XRP Ledger which they launched along with its native digital currency, XRP.

After the launch, Chris Larsen joined the team. Together, they opened a private company called OpenCoin, which eventually changed its name to Ripple. The company was provided with 80 billion out of the 100 billion total supply of XRP tokens.

XRP’s primary role is to provide instant and low-cost cross-border payment settlements.

XRP can be used as an investment or as a digital asset to exchange with other cryptocurrencies. However, its main use is to make international payments and currency exchanges. With traditional international transfers being slow and costly, XRP can significantly cut the transaction time short.

Additionally, XRP also acts as an intermediary currency. In most cases, you can’t directly exchange one currency for another. They first need to be swapped into an intermediary currency like the US dollar. With XRP, it’s much easier to trade any traditional currency or even other cryptocurrencies for another at a faster and lower cost per transaction.

No, XRP is not owned or controlled by a single entity.

Decentralisation is one of the main appealing aspects of cryptocurrencies, but the XRPL has received criticism for being centralised for its list of validators and stored XRP.

XRP’s list of Validators

Many believe that Ripple has the power to control who oversee the transactions in the XRP Ledger. This is because Ripple issues a Unique Node List, a list of validators that confirm transactions in the ledger. However, the company claims that a large portion of validators on their UNL are independent. Ripple currently has 35 trusted nodes to their list, but only three are ran by the company.

Participants can choose not to follow Ripple's list. Several entities like XRP Ledger Foundation and Coil have also published their own list of recommended validators that they can choose from. They can also construct their own list of trusted validators. This means that the network will not be affected even if Ripple acts maliciously or shuts down.

Massive XRP supply

The large portion of XRP that Ripple holds is another concern frequently pointed out by critics. The founders of XRP were gifted 80 billion tokens in exchange for developing the XRP Ledger. They regularly sold XRP in portions, which led to the belief that Ripple can manipulate the price of the cryptocurrency. For instance, they can release large quantities of XRP and dilute the value of the tokens current circulating supply.

Ripple eventually locked 55 billion in a series of escrows, with the intent of providing additional predictability to the digital coin’s supply. As a show of good faith, they added conditions to maintain the trust of the public or users. One of these stipulations include not flooding the market by releasing large quantities of XRP. Ripple also need to sell XRP over the counter (OTC) to institutional investors to incentivise its ecosystem. Any unused funds every month must also be returned to a new escrow to be sold later.

Additionally, Ripple must be transparent over the use and sale of XRP. They release quarterly XRP market reports, which includes the amount released to the market and returned to the escrow.

No, XRP doesn’t have fees returned to Ripple or rewarded validators after being implemented into the XRP Ledger.

Cryptocurrency transactions often involve miners' fees and transaction fees. Like any network, transaction fees apply to the XRP Ledger as well. The transaction fees are designed to protect the network from excessive load. Since the cost increases with the network load, attempting to overload the network can be expensive.

As long as it’s above the minimum fee of 0.0001 XRP, users can decide on the cost of that fee. However, the fee doesn’t go back to a central authority like Ripple or paid to validators or any other party. Instead, it will be irreversibly destroyed. Burning cryptocurrency is a common practice to increase value of the digital currency. In the case of XRP, it is also a way to protect the network from spam, malicious behaviour, and DDoS attacks.

Ripple was provided 80 billion XRP tokens. Of them, 55 billion XRP was placed in escrow accounts.

There are only 100 billion XRP tokens in existence, and unlike most cryptocurrencies, all of them were already minted before its launch. Ripple was given 80 billion XRP tokens to fund future operations and development. XRP enters circulation whenever Ripple decides to sell coins from its pre-mined stash on the secondary market.

Ripple transferred 55 billion XRP into an escrow in 2017 with the intent to improve the transparency and predictability of XRP sales. The company sells a maximum of one billion tokens per month. Any unsold tokens at the end of the month will be returned to the escrow and re-distributed in the future.

XRP is available right here on Independent Reserve.

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Deposit New Zealand dollars into your Independent Reserve trading account to start buying XRP.

After signing up on Independent Reserve you can deposit money from your New Zealand bank account using a bank transfer or wire transfer. It usually takes 1-3 business days to process funds. Once your money is available, you’re ready to trade XRP and other crypto. Deposits of NZD5000 and above are free.

Having trouble with your deposits? Visit our support page for assistance.

Yes, our world-class security will keep your digital assets safe.

After you have purchased XRP on Independent Reserve you can simply leave it in your wallet on the exchange and it will be stored securely.

As a highly reputable and trusted crypto exchange, we have the highest level of protection measures in place to ensure that our customers’ cryptocurrency is kept safe. We offer; two-factor authentication (2FA), ISO 27001 certification, and top-tier underground vaults to protect your crypto. Learn more about the security features of our platform.