Why would I invest in Ethereum now and not in Ripple? Ripple Labs has around 40 people and impressive list of Investors and Advisors.
https://www.ripplelabs.com/investors/https://www.ripplelabs.com/advisors/Their platform and client are already functional and people are trading on it every second. This is a genuine question. I have a few bitcoins and I want to invest in the most rewarding crypto platform.
Someone else can probably answer this better, but here's one difference. Ripple is "fully mined" which means all the coins are already in existence. Actually that's not correct, as there was no mining, the coins were just poofed into existence. And they just happen to be under the control of the organization, which can sell, trade, give them away, etc, as it sees fit, basically controlling the majority of the supply. Investing in Ripple places all the trust in one corporation, not a decentralized system like Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc.