"Ben Bernanke, who led the U.S. central bank during the 2008 financial crisis, outlined the complicated process it would take for a bank in Germany to send a payment to a bank in the U.S., before saying:

"It's an obvious area where new technologies like blockchain or these electronic currencies can be used to improve the process."

Bernanke, now a distinguished fellow in residence at the Brookings Institute, called out Ripple by name, saying that he's read about the company's work and thinks that any effort in payments to reduce cost, improve accuracy, speed and reliability and "bring the global economy closer together" is a good thing."

Dec 16 2017
https://www.coindesk.com/bernanke-blockchain-payments-obvious-area-tech-help/

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Dec 14th 2017
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/14/ripple-surges-89-percent-in-single-day-briefly-becomes-third-biggest-digital-currency.html

Ripple, or XRP, surged 89 percent Thursday to a record high of 89.2 cents and was last trading near 81 cents, giving it a market value of $31.6 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

$30 Billion Dollars

The website showed bitcoin cash had regained third place by late Thursday afternoon, with a market value of $32.1 billion.

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Jan 6th
https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-claims-3-money-transfer-firms-xrp-2018/

Jan 8 2017
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/ripple-xrp-market-cap-bigger-than-bitcoin-if-price-hits-7.html

"With bitcoin, the largest cyrptocurrency by market cap, having a quiet start to the year, many investors are looking at alternative cryptocoins. Ethereum and ripple, for example, have seen fairly strong rallies to begin the year. And many are wondering which one could usurp bitcoin as the biggest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum and ripple have been jostling for the second spot, and that has changed depending on price. That jostling turned volatile on Monday as the price of ripple tumbled. Bitcoin also fell, while ethereum gained in value. Ripple's current circulation is 38,739,144,847 digital coins. At Monday's earlier price of $2.49, its market cap was $96.46 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Bitcoin's market cap, meanwhile, was $254.2 billion on Monday."

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XRP is not a cryptocurrency

“Released in 2012, Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple Labs. It is also called the Ripple Transaction Protocol and is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and uses the native “cryptocurrency” XRP. Ripple’s focus is to create a system than enables “secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks”.
At its core, Ripple is based around a shared, public ledger which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exchanges and remittance in a distributed process.”

– Wikipedia’s definition

So far so good. But this is not the end of the story.

Actually XRP is an electronic token, created and backed by a single company:
Ripple Labs Inc. – a global money transaction business.

It should be noted that there is a distinct difference between digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ripple’s XRP tokens. While Bitcoin is an actual cryptocurrency and store of value, XRP tokens are essentially backed by traditional (Fiat) currencies, as if they’re dollars or yet or another form. XRP is not intended to be money in the first place, it is a medium of exchange to transact value. It can be seen as a giftcard or token that can be sent in seconds & redeemed for fiat money.

https://cryptoyoda1338.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/the-truth-about-ripple/

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My overall impression here is skepticism.

I have been following this, much more than the above shared links. Let me make the connection here between the Fed chairman himself who is responsible (it was his job) during the banking crisis. Have we all forgotten?

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION

FOOL ME ONCE

FOOL ME TWICE

CANT GET FOOLED-

CANT GET FOOLED AGAIN

Bitcoin is still about 250 billion dollars of Market cap, something only recently attained. I feel like a lot of new money is moving in thanks to MSM and banks adopting ripple as a settlement technology, but it is not a bitcoin. There are 38 billion coins compared to limited 21 million BTC. I honestly don't care about the price in USD becuase I am Canadian, but I care even less about the Loonie which has no intrinsic value whatsoever either. STEEM is my favourite, so if you made good gains on Ripple I highly suggest taking a good 20% of your profit and buying SBD.