i'm always stunned to see that there are so many btc supporters!
btc is everything but a safe haven and a gold standard! - it's a centralized coin controlled by the top 3 mining pools (controlling 51%+ of the hash).
Calling it a centralized coin is an insult to the crypto community. The Aug 1st fork showed that BTC can upgrade despite the influence of large mining pools. At least the BTC algo can't be changed any minute contrary to Ripple's.
because a bank will save money on every transaction... XRP is also needed to cover transaction fees for their use of ripple's network. if any IOU:XRP becomes liquid enough, and banks can find a way to hedge their long exposure to XRP, then market makers may offer the IOU:XRP cross - order flow goes to liquidity.
That's all but wishful thinking. Banks will adopt the blockchain technology gradually and if they need tokenisation, they may very well create their own tokens or establish a standard token like they did for the Swift network.