I honestly am not sure that Ripple/XRP should be compared side by side to BTC/LTC, or that either of those should be compared fully to ETH. Each are so different and of the four, XRP serves a purpose which is really inherently different and exclusive from the rest.   

I don't believe that there has to be a winner between BTC / XRP, but that they would almost be more likely to coexist as fiat and gold do, today.

I am not a crypto expert by even a long shot. I research and read and I buy and HODL and rinse and repeat, but I still struggle to fully grasp the entirety of what blockchain and crypto are and will become. When someone compares the market cap of a crypto to the USD I think wow, you're right. But then I realize....woah, the U.S. is such a SMALL part of the global equation of which BTC actually applies. As you pointed out, a Chinese crackdown on BTC really did not hurt the coins value. Crypto and Blockchain are huge.

In that same regard, I see XRP as being pretty different in terms of an investment when compared to a coin like BTC or LTC. (LTC being my personal favorite digital currency for actual use and transactions due to transaction speeds).   

but Ripple Labs as I see it is a private company who built a product and has this product suite of offerings to offer their corporate customers. Ripple Labs strikes me as a decent company with a good product that can help their target market (Banks) improve their service to customers and profit margins. That gives them a neat product offering and makes it an interesting company to me. I buy XRP like I would stock in a company that I think is going somewhere, because if Ripple's application takes off in that more centralized/private world, then their "currency" will likely increase in value and use as well.

I buy BTC differently, as a store of increasing value, such as gold. 

I dont know, that's my perspective and I may not be doing a grand job of expressing how my meager intelligence is processing the crypto world, but I just see XRP and BTC in different lights, personally.

I don't see why a government entity would aim to shut down Ripple labs  and their product line anymore than they would gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or what-have-you.

you could always just email the GW support staff directly with your questions and share your findings here, of course. I had emailed them direct and found the responses to be very quick (same day) and helpful.

i can second this. I haven't decided if I'm going to invest yet, but I can attest to the fast and friendly responses directly from GW support. including spreadsheets where applicable.

Is anyone currently mining with the L3's at Giga Watt? at today's valuation of LTC, what are estimated ROI's after maintenance, electricity, and hosting if you do not own tokens? I am considering a couple machines but trying to make sure I understand the current ROI structure (knowing full well that the numbers can and likely will fluctuate between now and September.)

with todays values on BTC/LTC, what ROI are customers seeing per machine? (S9 or L3).

What considerations are clients taking into account when considering deploying hardware at GW? major benefits I see are:

1. 24/7 maintenance by professionals
2. lower cost of operation / higher returns
3.

The idea of essentially hiring professionals to operate "my" equipment and then having BTC drip into my account monthly is quite appealing. I just need to make the business case to myself.

With the facility being rather secretive, no address or phone number listed, payment only accepted via BTC, no refunds available (obviously) of tokens, how do we authenticate the legitimacy of it all?

Please excuse my naivety. this is a new market to me and I don't mean to be rude in the least.