GrayFox

This would entail people are buying it for the wrong reasons. If you wanted to remit $100 worth of XRP then you buy $100 worth of XRP so it doesn't matter if at this point 1 XRP is $1 or $10,000. All that matters to you is you want $100 worth of XRP to make your cross border transaction. To the people buying BTC now compared to 5 years ago, does it matter to them if it's $100 or $20,000? No, they are just stacking Sats. XRP's use case means the price of a single XRP does not matter as you buy what you wish to transmit however an ever increasing value of XRP is required to sustain a growing demand for ODL. This assumes Ripple's ODL will continue to see growth however the current market price is sufficient in line with current demand.

Oh man, its so nice to go back reading through from the first post to date and watching things unfold so quickly but in real time its taken over a year nearly

Crypto? What crypto? I don't know what you are referring to. What the hell is a DLT? Is that like a BLT but with Duck Lettuce and Tomato?

A penny for your thoughts who might potentially be acquired by or merged with Ripple. In my eyes, SWIFT is way too big to fail and right now I don't feel Ripple is strong enough to topple them from their perch. SWIFT is way too entrenched in the incumbents but when it comes to digital, that's where Ripple shines and hands down SWIFT loses this battle on any given day. So if incumbent banks are losing the battle against challenger banks then that leaves digital banks who are hungry and ready to destroy incumbents at the digital age. My head is about to explode......

This is normal in the US. There's way too many patent vultures where companies just buy patents in the hope of suing other companies for royalties. Patent trolls are a real threat to innovation. Even John Oliver did an episode on them and its worth the watch:

I don't believe this is outside the realm of possibilities and if it does happen then probably for Ripple to remain neutral is if a consortia buys them. If they do get bought out then it means Ripple has become such a threat that they must own it and either speed up its adoption or kill it in its infancy. I hope the former and not the latter.

It is inevitable. The dotcom bubble showed how the world was beginning to get smaller through digitisation. Hence after the dotcom bubble, companies like the FANG saw considerable gains. Payments and settlements on the otherhand have not evolved much to actually meet this new "instant everything" landscape. The economy is moving way too fast for SWIFT. I say, take it outside and shoot it so we can tokenise everything!

At least this year's chart is much better than last year's.

You should go with your gut feeling. Whenever you feel that risks far outweigh the benefits then it's probably time to reevaluate your position. This is a gamble and will always remain a gamble just like the stock market and you shouldn't take someone else's opinion to change your mind hence the do your own research. I plan on doing the same in a few years time but that is based on my personal views and I don't intend on forcing them onto anyone. DLT RTGS systems are years away for Central banks and I mean years if not a decade hence why the bank of england did not build a new RTGS system based on DLT from the grounds up however they allowed to tap into DLT and may be the next gen in 10 to 20 years time will be based on DLT. Here's a video of Victoria (BoE) shedding some light on the future:

The initial test which was conducted between Canada and Singapore was simply a test of using DLT and settling with CBDC across border. They were using Corda and Quorum respectively: The two central banks have successfully linked up their respective experimental domestic payment networks, namely Project Jasper and Project Ubin [1] , which are built on two different DLT platforms. The project teams used a technique called Hashed Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC) to connect the two networks and allow Payment versus Payment [2] (PvP) settlement without the need for a trusted third party to act as an intermediary. The Jasper-Ubin project [3] was carried out in partnership with Accenture and J.P. Morgan, who supported the development of the Canadian network on Corda, and the Singapore network on Quorum, respectively. Please refer to Annex for further details of the experiment. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2019/central-banks-of-canada-and-singapore-conduct-successful-experiment-for-cross-border-payments You are absolutely right, it has nothing to do with Ripple but as RippleNet does support Hashed Time-Locked Contracts through the Interledger Protocol, this did not go amiss in their final report: https://www.mas.gov.sg/-/media/Jasper-Ubin-Design-Paper.pdf?la=en&hash=EF5857437C4857373A9287CD86F56D0E7C46E7FF With Bank of England's next RTGS system moving towards opening its doors to fintechs and allowing innovative systems even those built on DLT to connect directly, this will open doors for Central Bank to Central Bank atomic settlement through third parties. Ripple is one of many third parties but Interledger Protocol so far stands above the rest. Edit: My long term view that I hold which is why I still have skin in the game is that I envision when these RTGS systems launch by 2025, the level playing field means small fintechs like Moneygram can take on SWIFT giants like HSBC by gaining direct access to Central banks without having the need to go through Big banks and at the same time they will use digital assets to bypass the Nostro/Vostro relation and go straight for On Demand Liquidity. Competition will be fierce and prices will go down. Either way it is win/win for customers. This is why I don't believe I'll see any significant gains until 2025 and beyond and I don't mind holding but I'll probably be shot down by moonboys and space lambos for having a long term view.

And they both along with Bank of England worked together on cross border interbank payments. The gist of it was, they were trying to see if they can stitch together the RTGS systems across border. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/research/digital-currencies-and-fintech/fintech-experiments-and-projects/

It is difficult to answer some of these questions. If Ripple is bound by Non disclosures then we will never know the true extent of its adoption. Ripple is privately run and not publicly traded so they do not need to reveal anything to us and certainly NDAs don't help this matter at all. SWIFT is for the banks, by the banks and of the banks. Central Bank money used to be exclusive to just banks. This is changing to create an even playing field. Take the Bank of England for example opening its doors to non-banks which is an incredible moment where you no longer need to go through HSBC, Barclays and their ilks to get to BoE. The price chart for XRP should not be an indicator to Ripple's success and adoption. After all, blockchain and DLT pose some fundamental questions, are they technologically advance enough to force us to rethink our entire monetary system and financial markets or do these systems simply provide enough advancement that they only need to plug and play with the current system. Do they complement or do we need to rebuild? I'm in XRP because I believe Interledger Protocol will affect the XRP price in the future and that future could be 10 to 20 years down the line and I'm happy to stay. If DLT is asking us to rebuild or rethink our financial system for the internet age, then it's not something that will take under 5 years. I believe there are other factors that may affect the future growth of the crypto market. Take for example, Africa's advancement in Mobile money and their free trade agreement. They demand interoperability for this to succeed. This may take years to build and incorporate the whole continent into a single market.

Bad accounting and cooking books might be the downfall of many of those "too big to fail" players. I hope Harry Markopolos is wrong about General Electric cooking their books and that they are fine but if he is right, then we are about to see a downfall that would eclipse Enron. 280,000 employees are about to go down with it and pensions included. Personally for Ripple, they wouldn't be affected. In fact, I believe a recession would be the perfect time for Ripple to flourish. Banks could potentially save billions getting rid of most of their I.T. budget and jumping to Cloud and DLT based solutions. The lower error rates in settlements also improved KYC/AML checks will save them money by automating the processes instead of having entire departments dedicated to those tasks. PS: For the General Electric fiasco, I'm referring to this:

If anything this just makes me more bullish. https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/economic-bulletin/articles/2019/html/ecb.ebart201905_03~c83aeaa44c.en.html#toc5