Does investing in Ripple make any sense?

 It’s been one of biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap for a long time and many of us are familiar with Ripple and it’s cryptocurrency XRP. However, what use does it have for the individual investor? Is anyone actually buying anything with Ripple? Are there any businesses out there that accept XRP as a means of payment?

The Ripple network is basically a cryptographic layer over the traditional banking system. It facilitates faster and cheaper interbank payments and remittances. XRP provides the liquidity for these transactions.

Ripple frequently announce that they have signed agreements with major financial corporations which boosts sentiment and drives more investment in XRP. However, some of these large financial institutions will use the Ripple system to transfer fiat currencies and commodities without having a requirement to use XRP. Ripple looks like a great company with excellent technology but what can XRP really be worth if there is no requirement for their corporate clients to use it?

I think that many small investors are buying XRP as a speculative trade because they hear Ripple partnering with major financial institutions and therefore believe that the currency will rocket in value at some point in the future. That may well be true but I am becoming a bit sceptical.

Another important point to mention is that 100 Billion XRP were created but only 38 Billion have been released so far. Releasing billions more XRP in the future will no doubt have an impact on it's price. Just recently Ripple placed 55 Billion XRP into escrow to ensure certainty of total supply.

The price of XRP is less volatile than many other cryptos but after a recent climb to $0.25, it has started to drop back. Is it time to move out of Ripple and into some higher growth alt-coins?