Preface

Money has evolved over the years. In its early days, it was physical objects, eventually becoming gold. It later took the form of gold coins. Since these coins were expensive to mint, money later took the form of paper currency. The evolution of technology has given us digital currencies, though they still struggle to keep up with the pace of technology. This is because different banks have different systems that don't work effectively with each other. A lot of processes in these traditional systems are still manual. This has slowed down the movement of money between people and organizations. The security of these systems has also been proven weak on numerous occasions. 

We need a system with strong interoperability and security features. In 2009, a decentralized currency called Bitcoin was invented with strong security, privacy, and autonomy features. It enables people to send money across borders without revealing their identity. The system is completely autonomous. It doesn't need any human supervision. Computers that run the Bitcoin program communicate with each other to enable global payments.

Later, Ethereum was invented. It is more than a payment network. It enables people to program money and build decentralized applications through smart contracts. Though Bitcoin and Ethereum are great innovations, they can only process a limited number of transactions per minute. The bigger problem being they don't support existing fiat currencies such as the US dollar or the euro.  

Ripple provides a decentralized system that allows you to transfer anything of value. Though it issues its own currency, called XRP, it allows the transfer of fiat currencies and physical assets (as long as they can be represented digitally). It also provides a solution for banks that integrates with their traditional systems to make international transfers fast and cheap. Furthermore, it allows you to program the flow of money with its escrow, check, and payment channel features. Since it's an open system, it allows anyone anywhere in the world to build applications on top of it.