- it is explicitly (or at least formerly) not considered a currency
- it is centralized (the company can freeze accounts if it wants, create more coins, or be sued)
- it's major use case is for inter-bank transfers. So if Bank A and Bank B was to exchange currency x for y, they will use XRP in-between. But this gives no value to the currency itself, it is just used as an intermediary. Is it conceivable that Ripple the company will not have enough XRP for these internal bank transfers and they are going to have to buy them back from the public??
So it seems that XRP has no value outside its use by the company Ripple. Is anyone actually using it for commerce or any other reason? It is not considered a store of value like bitcoin (in any case one would want something decentralized.
It's a very interesting question. The possible answer is that nowadays the cryptomarket is driven by hype, news, encreased expectations and etc. There are many undervalued projects with great background, but nobody knows them and that's why nobody buys them. This is my personal opinion. I also don't understand high ripple prices at all.