Ripple is an impressive and astounding accomplishment in marketing hoax. Ripple Labs has successfully painted their brand as friendly and amenable to establishment players, yet there is practically zero adoption whatsoever, and Ripple requires establishment adoption because there is essentially no way for it to be useful on a purely peer-to-peer basis. The business model of Ripple Labs depends on XRP being preferred as a reserve currency for building exchange paths, yet the massive founder holdings and mickey mouse lolfunbucks distribution swings like a sword of damacles of counterparty risk over any possible appreciation due to adoption in that way. Ripple is absolutely terrifying, because I am hard pressed to think of any FUD story that is unfairly hoisted upon Bitcoin that doesn't turn out to be literally true about Ripple.
The way I understand it is that the ripple network is less dependant on XRP that what you are describing. It is mostly a bridge currency, useful but not that necessary in my view.
Also, we perfectly know who holds the XRPs, the same cannot be said for the top bitcoin whales who own 50k-100k coins.
Recently we have seen integration with Fidor bank, Earthport and others. The "adoption" ripple labs is going for is doing pretty fine if you ask me. On top of that, the technology is still very new.
I think the dudes at Ripple Labs are onto something huge, and that is actually useful. I'm not 100% convinced on XRP as an investment long term tho.
Spot on. Hard to find good posts like this. The Bitcoin community is not a nice place anymore.