Wanted to point out some points about ripple that a lot of people probably don't understand. Ripple like every other business wants to make money, even the Steemit business and all of you reading this, we all would like to make more money. Most of us have values and don't take greed to the level of some business people out there, but again everyone would love an extra buck or two or hundreds. ripple was designed to make cross border payments easier and much less expensive and then easily convert it into fiat of there choice. In my opinion they want to be the money gram or western union of the future. Which are two huge corporations to go up against, they dominate along side some other smaller companies. There is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to ripple. Again I'm not for it or against it, it is what it is. I wanted to point that out. There trying to replace a system that's already in place and make it cheaper and faster, some banks are signing up to experiment with ripple most likely because they probably feel left behind. I know I'll get trolled for this comment, so be it. I'm simply stating a point to clear up some air.

Edit

http://www.coindesk.com/ripple-pledges-lock-14-billion-xrp-cryptocurrency/8