I have to admit I’m an early adopter of Ripple. I bought a few a few years ago but not enough to get rich. But that is not what I would like to discuss. At the time when I bought my initial Ripples I was very impressed about Ripple’s Vision. I liked the idea to enable banks to send real time international payments across networks with traceability and low cost settlement. To their credit they exactly concentrated on their vision and indeed various banks are trialing or even using it today.
Did it bother me that the coins were pre-mined and owned by a group ? Not really. Some industries don’t like 100% open source or decentralized systems. I believe the bank industry is one of them and approaching them with a system like Ripple was the right thing to do. Also the latest announcement by Ripple to place 55 billion XRP in Escrow to ensure certainty of total XRP supply sends a signal to investors.
The major exchanges support ripple and the ripple network and its software (gatehub etc) is working really well. Only a mobile app is really missing here.
I truly still believe that Ripple is adding value and has much to offer. The price for the coin I find is still very cheap. What I don’t understand why other coins with less features are trading much higher than Ripple. Currently Ripple is around the 25c mark, very stable but not moving much. Banks are supporting it and it has a very active group working and supporting it.
What else is required to go for the next step for Ripple ? Do I miss something here ?