Every day, companies and consumers around the world send more than $76 billion in payments through a vast network of banks. Without the flow of money, container ships stay in port, workers don’t get paid, and supply chains break down. For the past six years, Ripple, a tech company in San Francisco, has vowed to use the blockchain wizardry behind Bitcoin to rewire this global circulatory system with what it calls an “internet of value.”
That in itself would be a fairly interesting business story. But then Ripple became a part of the great cryptocurrency melt-up of late 2017. The company owns a lot of a digital token called XRP. From late September to early January, XRP saw an astonishing 1,300 percent increase in value, blowing away the gains of rival virtual currencies Bitcoin and Ether and turning its executives into paper billionaires. One rationale for buying XRP is that unlike Bitcoin, the token has one narrowly defined but clearly useful purpose: to help banks move cash from point A to point B faster and more cheaply, especially across borders.
