Ripple is the new up-and-coming cryptocurrency, growing more than 100x its value in under a year. In January 2017, XRP was valued at 0.0064USD per coin, while currently, in December, the price is 0.8USD. The growth has only just started though and it’s not too late to hop on board this train. The price of Ripple is predicted to grow to more than $9USD in 2018; there’s still time to get a great return on investment, but you’ll need to act quick.

This growth in the value of XRP has been predicted for three main reasons.

1. XRP is likely going to be added to Coinbase at the start of 2018

Coinbase has recently announced that they will be adding various altcoins to the platform in 2018. While they haven’t confirmed which cryptocurrencies they will be adding, XRP is almost guaranteed to show up, due to its spiking popularity and massive market cap which is even bigger than one of the currently offered cryptos, Litecoin.

This is great news for the value of Ripple cryptocurrency, as this move would open up XRP to the 13,300,000 users of Coinbase. Many Coinbase users don’t use other platforms for their cryptocurrency purchases, either because they are beginner investors who don’t know how to use exchanges to purchase XRP, or they live in countries without local exchanges and don’t want to pay massive currency conversion fees. Therefore, many people who previously didn’t have access to Ripple will now be able to purchase this attractive, low-cost coin. This influx of investors is sure to lead to a huge price increase in XRP.

2. Ripple has already started being trialed in banks

This month, Ripple has partnered with 61 banks in Japan and 2 in Korea – a combined total of over $30billion in market capitalization – for a pilot test of the Ripple payment system. Ripple sets out to solve one of the major problems that banks face in today’s economy, transferring money internationally. Currently, international transfers take 3-5 days and incur large fees. With Ripple though, payments can be settled in four seconds for the cost of a few cents; the current average transaction fee for Bitcoin is 26.8USD.

After trials are successfully completed, the Ripple payment system will see widespread and rapid adoption by banks. After adoption of the Ripple payment system, it is very likely that banks will look to invest in XRP, which can further lower transfer fees and increase transaction efficiency when used in conjunction with this system. This huge flood of money from banks worldwide will no doubt cause XRP prices to soar.

3. The characteristics of Ripple make it ideal for widespread adoption

Ripple was designed with widespread adoption in mind and so has some major benefits over other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin. The advantages of Ripple XRP as a currency are its speed, scalability, and stability. As previously mentioned, payments of XRP are cleared within four seconds. This is much faster than Ethereum, which takes minutes, and Bitcoin, taking 1-2 hours. These transaction times are unreasonable for everyday use; imagine checking out at the grocery store and having to wait 5 minutes (or worse, 2 hours) for the transaction to clear!

In addition to quick processing times, Ripple is able to handle many more transactions than its crypto counterparts. The Ripple payment system can process 1500 transactions/second. That’s 100x as many as Ethereum, and 250x as many as Bitcoin. This system can also scale further, to match higher demands if necessary. Finally, Ripple has been proven to have impressive stability. Since its creation in 2012, every one of the 34 million+ transactions have been successfully completed without error. Due to all of these factors, Ripple has set itself up to become widely adopted, blowing all of the other popular cryptocurrencies out of the water with its impressive capabilities.

So there you have it; Ripple is definitely not going to slow down on its spectacular upwards trend. The quicker you can invest, the better! Not sure how to get your first XRP? Check out this handy step-by-step guide for beginners wanting to invest in Ripple or other cryptocurrencies.