A lot of people here don't like the fact that Ripple is 1) centralized 2) used by bank.
Which is the opposite of the bitcoin and BTC was made to fight against the bank.
So you can find a lot of negative comment and text about Ripple.
But, saying that, Ripple has professional implementation in a growing number of company & bank.
It's a good point for this coin. It might increase on the next news of Ripple implementation by another big bank or with a new use case.
Might go back to 1.5 $ in February if BTC value don't move up. And 2$ if BTC goes up also.