Personally, I'm not entirely convinced it's a scam. I might be wrong, but from what I've learnt so far, Ripple seems to have a lot of potential, it'll be interesting to see what 2018 will bring as far as Ripple is concerned, now that it's over-taken Ethereum to become the #2 crypto in terms of market cap - Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-29/ripple-s-ris-is-poised-to-rain-on-ether-s-flippening-parade