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Comment by black_puppydog | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty much exactly Ripple's use case, and remittances are a huge deal. So, progress! :)

Totally agree! But the one caveat is that using Ripple does not mean using XRP.

True, but MoneyGram is piloting xRapid, which is Ripple's product that uses XRP.

Ah you are correct! I couldn't' read the original article due to pay wall, but I found info on other site. Well this is great news for XRP hodlers.

That won't stop all the XRP owners from posting this everywhere to pump the price.

True. The whole relationship between Ripple, XRP, and potential other tokens on the same network(?) has always confused me. If someone has a good explanation (or rather a link to one, I'd be very happy about that.

For example if this test works out, what's to stop MoneyGram from using some other token, cutting out XRP altogether? Or just spin up their own system (think LTC vs BTC)?

I found this article yesterday and I think it answers part of your question:

https://hackernoon.com/4-alarming-reasons-ripple-might-not-b...

30% reduction in transaction cost if you use XRP over other currencies.

The weird transaction cost in ripple is that you always have to leave 20 XRP to the account. LOL.

That can change by vote, and they're looking at doing that as the price increases. In the past, XRP was well below $0.01, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Can you explain this further?

XRP is the currency to move money at Ripple.

They have some minor currencies for some situations like debt IIRC.

But Ripple is going to use their currency for transactions.

You're understanding is 1/3 correct. XRP is only used for xRapid protocol. Ripple Labs has 3 protocols (xCurrent, xVia, and xRapid) and the other 2 do not use XRP. However, it does look like MoneyGram is using xRapid.

The whole point of Ripple originally is that you could use it to send actual fiat money by using a network of trust relationships to chain together IOUs that could eventually be settled via actual transfers if necessary. Then after Bitcoin took off it was retooled as something more Bitcoin-like with its own internal cryptocurrency, XRP, and a ledger system to support it. (Except that the ledger is pretty much centralised.)

XRP is only used as a spam deterrent. There is a 0.00001 transaction fee to change ledgers (send money, but not XRP) in Ripple, that is actually destroyed, and there is a requirement that every account in Ripple maintain a $20ish balance of XRP.

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