I'm not an expert on Ripple by any stretch but understand a little bit about it. I've avoided buying it in the past - and consequently missed on some major profits, although it's now getting far cheaper again. My nagging concerns are a few, firstly the way I understand it, the primary reason for banks to own and use XRP will be to facilitate cross-border payments - currently there are massive amounts of funds in holding that are required for these purposes, which could become a stable and sizeable source of demand for the XRP currency. But that's based on how things work in today's world.

How likely is it that this method of transferring funds between currencies will remain? In the face of the emergence of a whole bunch of cryptos that can effectively remove the need to use banks at all for transferring funds between fiat currencies - indeed technologies that may remove the need for fiats at all.

My other main concern is the massive amount of XRP held by the creators, and which can be released as they wish into the market, effectively suppressing the price, at least for a longtime anyway.

Thanks for the article, helped me understand a bit more about the whole monetary and financial system and where Ripple, could, might fit in.