- 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.
i do have a similar question about ripple to understand more about the hype that its having right now. What will ripple achieve for the 'normal' consumers? I have read that ripple network is between banks for cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking. But will ripple ever be like bitcoin or other altcoins where end users can do transactions with each other or buy goods with ripple without an intermediary or are we simply investing in a project of a company just like shares/stocks but then in ripple?