2017 was the best year so far for the cryptocurrency market and blockchain technology has become popular than ever. This is mainly an informative article for the newcomers who consider investing in Ripple, due to its great growth in recent days.

The XRP price analysis, which is the symbol of the ripple network, reveals that it has increased by 20,000% in 2017. Sound crazy, right!? That breaks by far all the price records of this year and just to mention a few: bitcoin (1,500%), litecoin (5,000%) or ethereum (8,000%).

At the beginning of 2017, an XRP was just 0.01 cents, or 1/100 of a penny. It's amazing that now the price of an XRP is above $1.

Related: Ripple Analysis: A constantly growing cryptocurrency

There is an overwhelming number of cryptocurrencies available right now on the market. Patience is the key in this business and there is a lot to learn before you can start trading. 

Always keep in mind that the cryptocurrency market is extremely volatile and you should never invest if you can't afford to lose.

Here is a list of things to keep in mind before you start trading(most of the rules apply for all cryptocurrencies): 10 Things To Know Before investing in Bitcoin| Beginners Guide

What is Ripple(XRP)? How is Ripple different from Bitcoin? How can I buy ?

What is Ripple?

The decentralized cryptocurrency network:Ripple aims to help banks and financial institutions and through its technology allows them to receive, send money and settle transactions cheaper and faster than their existing backup systems.

The Ripple node network is like the bitcoin blockchain, but it is not a chain of blocks. In fact, although Ripple was not launched until 2012, the concept originated in 2004, which predates Bitcoin, as the creator of Ethereum Vitalik Ursula wrote in 2013.

Keep it in your mind like this: XRP is what the ether is for Ethereum, or what bitcoin is for the bitcoin blockchain.

But there is an important difference between XRP and bitcoin.

XRP is just a utility and not an actual digitial currency: the banks or financial institutions that use Ripple carry out their transactions in XRP. The company calls XRP a "settlement token".

Ripple does not have mining operations like the bitcoin blockchain, where more bitcoins are created each time a miner loads transaction data; instead, Ripple transactions are verified by several parties to achieve consensus.

Sience Ripple is not a real digital coin there will be no new coins in the future. Ripple Labs owns 60 billion of the 100 billion XRP in existence (when looking for the market capitalization of XRP, those 60 billion are not included). And the success of Ripple, the network, does not depend on the price of XRP.

XRP transactions are cleared in 4 seconds according to the company. Compare it with the chain of bitcoin blocks, where transactions are often carried out hourly.

Why has XRP increased so much this year?

If you want to purchase XRP rember that Coinbase, the most popular market to buy cryptocurrencies, still does not offer it. Coinbase only performs cash transactions of bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin. Here are the alternatives: Bitstamp, ShapeShift, Kraken, GateHub or Bitso.

(Warning: cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile, with big swings up and down, week after week. Our tips simply gives you information on how to buy if you wish.)

So, why is XRP increasing its value so fast?

Ripple has generated many new features in the last year or two as it expands its list of high profile partners.

Last year, Ripple announced a large number of new banking partners at a time, including Santander and UBS. Last month, Ripple added American Express, a big name that sparked attention in Ripple and propelled XRP.

More recently, Bloomberg added XRP, litecoin and data to its terminals last month. This week, SBI Holdings, a financial firm in Asia, and SBI Ripple Asia announced that they would use RippleNet.

But the recent increase in XRP is probably not news. Almost every day, a different cryptocurrency is triggered and experts debate the cause. More generally, there is a lot of excitement (or mania, depending on your opinion) on the crpyto market, and investors are quickly learning the differences between each currency and putting money into some or many.