While the overhang of the Ripple Labs horde of XRP is very disconcerting, as is the falling out with Jed M, you can't deny that ripple seems to have a lot of development money and effort behind it. They are clearly the most professional outfit in alt coins these days.
The "Jed effect" seems historically positive. His departure at ground level on gox ushered in a time where under new management everything began to be manipulated to high hell- heading parabolic skyhigh, before crashing and burning back to nothing. By that time he was onto his next venture, and the cycle repeats itself. same manipulation & spam tx on the ripple orderbooks: https://forum.ripple.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8668
Let's not forget whilst ripple protocol may be useful more than a modest amountof XRP is not required to use the ripple network on a personal level, xrp was never intended to be used as a store of value, and the vast majority is n the hands of private entities and large firms who were given sweetheart deals; siginficant discounts to the recent trading range
If you beleive in jed effect you would probably be jumping into the 710 million $ cheaper stellar right now