Most people I know only buy Ripple because of greed. Because it might be a good investement. But don't be fooled, a strong Ripple is bad for our crypto market because it makes a massive manipulated and centralized shitcoin stronger as is should be. We need strong decentralized coins such like Bitcoin, to be strong. 
Bitcoin is already strong. Even more so than Ripple. While that's the case, we shouldn't underestimate the power of whales and "Wall Street". Most investors don't care about decentralization these days, so they will pour money on any coin as long as it's able to make them lots of money in the long run.
At the time of this writing, XRP has many fans. It might reach new ATHs if momentum continues to increase. There are now talks of adding smart contracts into the XRP Ledger (CTO David Schwarz said so), so you can see where this is heading to. Centralized "shitcoins" will continue to take the spotlight, while truly-decentralized coins are left behind in the dust (except Bitcoin). Many things can happen in the future. Better be prepared for the worse, just in case.