In my opinion, Ripple's XRP is one of the most overvalued and worthless networks in the space. Much of their code is not open source, which is totally against the entire concept of DLT. Ripple Labs premined 100% of the coins and still has 55 BILLION coins left in the bank (more than half the total supply and double the circulating supply). On top of that shitshow, banks don't need Ripple. With a flick of their wrist banks could easily fund a team to make their own product and cut XRP out of the equation entirely. What is the point of it?
That being said...
The fundamental value of a project and the speculative value of a project are two completely separate things. I learned this the hard way when I first got into this space. If fundamentals had fully taken over we never would have entered a bear market to begin with. The world would abandon all their inferior fiat tokens and crypto would already be mainstream. Yeah well, that's not how the world works.
If people think XRP has value, then it does. The value of a currency lies in the community that uses it. Considering how easy it is to trade one crypto for another, surely XRP leeches some value just from being a part of the space and appearing on exchange listings in the first place.
This is where my original premise comes in.
I view XRP's main value as a metric of market greed. Knowing that XRP's fundamentals make zero sense, therefore having zero fundamentals, means that it's value is purely speculative and based on the idea that we need to bring the banks to the table as this new economy emerges. Investors of XRP don't care about borderless censorship resistant collaboration. They simply care about making money and hoping the next guy will pay more than they did. Surely, we can apply this concept to many people across all networks but XRP stands alone given the shear magnitude.
A Measure of Greed.
XRP is the perfect measurement of greed in the market seeing as it lacks all required DLT fundamentals. This in itself somehow gives it value. In the past, full market greed peaks when XRP flips Ethereum. Will history repeat itself? I believe there is a very good chance it will.
Speculation
If Bitcoin does what I think it's going to do in 2021 we'll be looking at x20 prices from where they are now. If Ethereum does what I think it's going to do it will outperform Bitcoin during this time. Seeing as XRP is currently less than one third the market cap of ETH, it would have to undertake an absolutely legendary run up in order to flip ETH and signal full market greed and the impending popped bubble to follow with another devastating year-long bear market. XRP would have to go at least x100 from where it is now.
So I should invest in XRP?
Ha, no... I would not advise that. As I've shown here, we can make money off of XRP without actually investing in it. If its market cap truly is a measurement of market greed and when the bubble is about to pop, this would make it very easy to know when to turn bearish on the market at large across all networks.
In addition, to invest in XRP is to make a bet on the status quo. We would be assuming that banks aren't going to fail and fiat isn't going to hyperinflate. I don't know about you, but the reason I got into crypto in the first place was because I was making a bet on the exact opposite. Bitcoin is a hedge against the system. The only way XRP can do well is if somehow crypto and banks exist harmoniously in the long-term, and I just can't see a reality where that actually happens. The disruption is real. The corruption of the legacy economy will inevitably implode itself, leaving Ripple Labs no clients left to service.
Ripple Labs Running out of coins.
Even though Ripple still controls more than half of the coins in the network, they are running out of capital at an "alarming" rate. In 2017 there were less than 39B coins issued with a market cap of $131B (wow), today that number stands at 45B.
Coins can only be spent once. It will be interesting to see where the network stands when they only control 10% of the total supply compared to 55%. In the grand scheme of things, a few big banks could easily get together and buy out the network entirely. This would be fully in their wheelhouse.
That would be yet another interesting scenario. There are a lot of ways this could all go down, and the death of XRP isn't necessarily set in stone, especially if many banks find themselves needing to abandon their failing fiat currencies and diversify their assets and exposure to the superior potential of crypto.
Conclusion
If the value of a currency stands on the backs of the community utilizing it, does XRP have what it takes to maintain a userbase? Is the community of greedy bank-monsters large enough to justify XRP's existence? I'd have to say the answer is obviously: yes. While we shouldn't be investing in this project out of shear politics, it's existence is still arguably very important and we should pay very close attention. When considering the digital economy, information has a very high value. We don't necessarily have to invest in a network that provides information for free if we're looking to simply turn a profit or understand the underlying mechanics of crypto communities and how they operate.