Ripple is approaching MasterCard in worth. Let that sink in for a moment.
It has surged over 1000% in a month.
It has yet to come out of the testing phase for banks.
This speculation has gotten out of control!
The company has the promise to capture hundreds of billions in market share, but it's not there yet. Only in the world of crypto, am I right?
The reason I am focusing on Ripple and why I am comparing it to stock, is it is much more similar to that then other cryptos. Sure it employs the blockchain, but it is centralized currency. Many in the crypto community view it with caution and disdain because it counteracts the egalitarian views of crypto that many of us hold. Decentralized, private, free from direct party control. We view crypto as liberation or revolution of the current banking system and Ripple doesn't check those boxes. It is revolutionary in the sense of its speed and scalability. It has the potential to be a enormous breakthrough in the ways banks transfer money, but it doesn't change the fabric of the financial world.
This also makes Ripple very attractive for those with a skeptical view of cryptocurrency. They see a way the blockchain can be utilized in a way that makes sense to them. This gives it enormous potential and with the number of partnerships in place I think it should be highly valued, but not to this degree.
MasterCards market cap is 162 Billion. 
Ripple is at 130.....
Am I just dumb? Is it really worth this much? Sure anything is worth what someone will pay for it, but it is just maddening. I have dollar signs for eyes and can't stop staring. I got into Ripple during summer and it still pains me to sell half even with how overvalued I believe it is right now.
Prediction
I could see Ripple hitting four or five bucks in the not too distant future. (3 months). I think it is overvalued now, and I think it will then. When it is officially added to coinbase, and when banks move out of the testing phase, it is anyone guess what will happen to the price, but I will be holding some until then. I think Ripple will be a absolute monster down the road, but it still has a lot to prove and when the crypto prices crash hard, I will be looking to this coin as one of my first pickups.
Just a quick post. Had to get some of my thoughts on this down.
I think this is all just a ploy for the banks to get free BTC and ETH. The banks "pre-mined" all the XRP then started selling it back and forth between each other, controlling the supply AND the demand, until the market started to notice and people couldn't resist trading their BTC and ETH for XRP because the price just keeps going up and up. Pretty soon the banks will have sold most of their XRP that they made up for nothing and will be holding billions in BTC that they basically got for free. Then they will let XRP crash by just never really doing anything with it and everyone will pile back on to BTC. BTC will hit $1 Million and banks will hold 25% of it that they got for free in 2017-2018. It's the perfect scam.
This was quite thought provoking - thank you. The interesting thing also is that BTC becomes cheaper to buy with XRP going up faster. Given the current manipulation of BTC through the futures market, therein lies their control of the conversion rates also...
Yep. In the end, BTC will win. And so will the bankers because they figured out how to take it from us. That's what they do. Boycott Ripple.
That is quite the interesting thought. That would sure be the way for the banks to game the system. I like the perspective.
The market cap comparisons with MasterCard have really struck a chord - thanks for the post.
I am invested in Ripple since like August and it has just blown up with a few ups and downs along the way. I have already cashed out my original stake and am just letting the profits roll now.
I did my research and saw that the early investors in the company were Google Ventures, Santander, Andreessen Horowitz and other big players... I was confident in my investment from that point of view. One thing I always tell people is that the XRP token is not a necessary part of their Blockchain and Interledger Protocol. Some of their partners have just been developing their own token on top - there may never be a need for XRP.
However, I am riding the wave, willing the ants to join the party, while just gradually converting the XRP gains to LTC.
it'd be interesting to know exactly where all the money flowing into Ripple is coming from and why.
If it's institutional money investing because they are going to be implementing the tech into their own operations, that's rational.
Though, one could also guess that it's just alot of newbies into the space who are just learning of it second to Bitcoin, not totally knowing what's what.
I think it'd be reasonable to expect that soon enough, some of the new attention in the space is going to start exploring what else is out there and see the relative undervaluation of numerous other projects with stronger value propositions, and being distributing accordingly.
Though, it could be that the institutional players do have their plans for utilizing Ripple and thus have more reason to stay invested in it.
Really hard to tell, given the sheer number of players and how much of this info doesn't leak to the internet...
Yah that is interesting to think about. Only time will tell, but that doesn't help us now. I could defiantly see it being some of the newbies and just throwing their money at it. Plus, crypto being so global I think it can draw in a lot of people from other countries who haven't invested before and can be sucked into trends and fomo more easily
https://steemit.com/eelo/@haja/meet-eelo-an-android-based-operating-system-that-doesn-t-use-google-services
I'm definitely and carefully watching this coin. I have real reservations about Ripple but until I see how it responds to the ups and downs of the market I'm refraining from investing in it.
That's a good idea. It's a risk throwing money at something that's hypervolitle even for the crypto world.
Ripple is already 3.5 dollars. Soon it will cross above 5 dollars and it won't even take a month for that.
I sure hope. We shall see, but the question is what will make it worth that much