XRP Ledger
payment protocol
The XRP Ledger (XRPL), also called the Ripple Protocol, is a cryptocurrency platform launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs. The XRPL employs the native cryptocurrency known as XRP, and supports tokens, cryptocurrency or other units of value such as frequent flyer miles or mobile minutes.
History
Development of the XRP Ledger began in 2011 by engineers David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto, with a discussion initiated by McCaleb on a public discussion board. The thread was titled "Bitcoin without mining" and was on BitcoinTalk.org. The open-source project was originally called "Ripple", the unique consensus ledger was called the Ripple Consensus Ledger, the transaction protocol was called the Ripple Transaction Protocol or RTXP and the digital asset (known as "ripples") using XRP as the three-letter currency code to follow the naming convention of BTC for Bitcoin. The technology of the "XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol" was formally established in 2012. In May 2018, Ashton Kutcher gifted a charity sponsored by Ellen DeGeneres $4 million in the currency, which was noted at the time to be the "third most-valuable cryptocurrency on the market".
On July 13, 2023, Judge Analisa Torres of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision on motions for summary judgment and stated the XRP token itself is not a security, although the manner in which it is sold could constitute the sale of a security. "XRP, as a digital token, is not in and of itself a 'contract, transaction, or scheme' that embodies the Howey requirements of an investment contract".
On March 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that XRP was one of five digital assets that he intended to name to a planned U.S. crypto strategic reserve.
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This entry incorporates text from “XRP Ledger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.