XRP is a crypto-currency.
It's apparently not a verifiable one.
Using any other crypto currency for that purpose would require Ripple to juggle with multiple chains
How so? Simply attach a transaction fee payable in Bitcoin (or something else).
, would increase significantly the load on that chain, create a dependency between Ripple and a currency that may not necessarily be future-proof due to the high energy cost of proof-of-work mining, and serve no purpose since Ripple already has a very efficient distributed ledger where it can handle it's own native math-based currency.
Among all crypto-currencies, Bitcoin is probably the worse fit as fees are orders of magnitude higher than current transaction costs in Ripple, and scalability is very limited.
Cryptocurrencies are made to transact value, so using them for transactions isn't Ripple's problem. Let's say that Ripple was truly concerned about that though. Then why not create Ripples own crytpcurrency alt-coin, and with a verifiable block chain. If there are arguments to using a block chain, and it's preferred to do it the way they have with a "genesis ledger" then okay, why not do that and give it the same level of mathematical check availability?
The original Ripple was brilliant IMO. I was a fan. That did what the current Ripple does and without any underlying currency.
If the original Ripple didn't need an underlying currency, Ripple Labs's product wouldn't be called "Ripple" today.
I'm not sure what it has to do with anything, but that's not my recollection. I visited Ripple's site
before Bitcoin became big, I'm pretty sure it was before I heard of Bitcoin and I've been around since very early. At that time "ripple" was about connections between people - friends and friends of friends - using those relationships to be able to transact value in the form of IOUs, for anything, like dollars. I thought that was a very cool model, but there was no "XRP" or mention of cryptocurrency in existence at that time. There didn't need to be, because it was all about social network relationships.