Hey all, super newbie here...
I'm not using Ripple yet and I'm not sure I plan to after reading what people here have to say about it. Yet I'm genuinely curious about it and I've got a question...
Can Ripple be used to buy LTC from BTC without having XRP involved in the process? Or is the "small fee" always paid in XRP?
Also, if I don't really "trust" Ripple to put all my eggs into and have no faith whatsoever in XRP, can I still use Ripple to, say:
- transfer a tiny amount of BTC from Bitstamp to Ripple
- exchange the tiny amount of BTC into another crypto currency at Ripple
- transfer the new cryptocurrency to my wallet(s)
How long would that take?
Basically I take it that my question comes down to: even if I don't trust Ripple much, can it still be useful to convert and move small amounts to/from different crypto currencies? (hence never being exposed too much to Ripple being a scam or getting owned by the feds / DoJ or hacked or anything else that could happen to the centralized dot com server).
One XRP costs about .03 cents. There are 1,000,000 'drops' in a ripple. The system charges 10 drops.... or .000001 cents to send currency (other than XRP) from one account to another. This is required to prevent spam and denial of service attacks on the system.
I believe 20 XRP are required for an active account, but there are free XRPs everywhere.
Yes, you can buy and sell LTC/BTC in the Ripple system.
Yes you can transfer a tiny amount of BTC from Bitstamp into Ripple.
Yes you can exchange that tiny amount of BTC for any fiat or crypto currency available. (It's still in Beta, mind you.)
Yes you can transfer that new crypto currency (i.e. Litecoin) back out of Ripple. (you may wanna consider using JustCoin)
You will never need more than .50 cents worth of XRP in your entire life as it will cover 20,000,000 transactions.
Everything that you do within the Ripple system is instant.
Ripple is not on a centralized server. The consensus ledger is kept on numerous servers around the world. In fact, I'm in the process of setting up RippleD server right now. It is Open Source. (
https://ripple.com/wiki/)
If you find a money swapping pair that is not available in the system....(for example Litecoin for Yen) ... then there is an opportunity for you to set yourself up as a market maker by offering that pair....
Good luck!! :-)