So as the alt scene grows faster than anybody can keep up with with all the new coins, exchanges, and miner tech, I got to thinking about ripple one of the original alts. Why do I hear so little about this alt when it stands out in the way that every alt wants and even bitcoin itself is having serious trouble with, exchange.
One of the things I hear within almost every alt community is the first and foremost need to separate the valuation from the bitcoin, by adding the ability to directly and securely exchange cash. The only 2 p2p currencies that I know you can do this with is bitcoin and ripple. In fact the largest exchange by market share,
https://www.bitstamp.net/ with 29% of the volume and accepting 7 different currencies internationally has been a ripple gateway for as long as I can remember.
For the US market primarily there is also
https://www.snapswap.us/#/welcome which makes getting going with ripple as simple as creating a invoice and sending cash via billpay. They are even offering a giveaway of upto 2000 ripple(XRP) worth 0.051 BTC according to the rate quoted at
https://www.kraken.com/ when I wrote this. So as a conclusion to this public question, it's only right to disclose I do hold XRP at Kraken since the ripple wallet site its self is lacking the security of 2 factor authorization and Kraken has some of the best security features have found on any exchange. Also the exchange rate I get at bitstamp is about 20% higher than Kraken.
So with the current exchange problems bitcoin has, the only alternative with international cash exchange capability being ripple, ignoring the btc-e route as it seems way to much of a risk for my dollars, does ripple gain market share now since it is better positioned than any p2p currency?
