-ripple has nothing to do with the rest of the criptos, for what i understand its aimed at solving a very specific problem for banks, so it plays well with current world structures (unlike bitcoin)
-ripple is already being used by some banks, wait until a couple more add themselves to the consortium, probably during this year?
You understand it wrong. Ripple the software may in theory be of interest to banks (although it is dubious), but XRP most certainly is not. You don't need XRP to use Ripple. No one uses the currency Ripple.
Of course it can rise far anyway, as long as it is kept rising and greater fools come along. This is helped by the fact that Ripple the company controls pretty much all Ripple the currency, so they can just keep it off the market until said fools arrive. They can siphon them off in a controllled manner, and please keep in mind that you are competing with them if you plan on getting rich by selling off your tokens in time.
So, maybe i am understanding it wrong, but as far i understand, ripple tokens are used in the negociation process when interchanging different currencies by the banking system. The further on ripple adoption, the more value the token bears.
However, more fundamentally, i find your words extremely bold, nearly like accusations of scam to ripple. I know the cripto scene is full of ideology based on "decentralization utopy". I love BTC decentralization ideas very interesting and experimental, but i dont think this is the main pilar for BTC value. On the other hand, i find this argument more under the paranoid movement (which i respect) very usual in USA (from infowars to 9/11 inside job, passing though the government chemtrails and such.. but who knows right?).
But to sustain that -> if is not decentralized / mined by independents, it is a scam. Seems kind of fanatic to this decentraliced idea to me. The use of such strong affirmation that ripple is only sustained by "fools" its already a strong indicator of fanatism to me. And fanatism is the enemy of reason, so.. yea
Its important to note that 99,9999% of working bussiness models today are based on centraliced entitities owning the assets. Centralized bussiness model are proven to work. Is the decentralized BTC experiment what has to be proven every day. Currently working succesfully as a store of value only BTW. Also, we all have our banks, society has banks and governements, and at least in developed countries, societies arent getting "fooled" and "robbed" every day because some entity bears control over a system. There are a lot of balancers, from journalism to freemarket (invisible hand). So nope, just beacuse XRP is to some exent centralized, doesnt mean its flawed