XRP, the token many people call Ripple, is the native digital asset of the XRP Ledger, an open source blockchain created in 2012 by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto and David Schwartz. Ripple, the US company that developed much of the technology, uses XRP in payment products designed to move money across borders quickly and cheaply. Transactions on the XRP Ledger typically settle in three to five seconds and cost a fraction of a cent, which is why XRP is mostly used for payments, remittances and liquidity between currencies. The total supply of 100 billion XRP was created at launch, so no new coins are mined. Unlike Bitcoin, the ledger relies on a consensus process rather than mining, which makes it far more energy efficient.