Great nice explanation.
Ripple XRP unlike many cryptocurrencies is centralized and to a certain extent controlled by the existing banking/ financial system, where Bitcoin etal seeks to be decentralized taking monetary control away from banks and in the hands of the people.
It is a utility tech for transferring money and a replacement solution to the long established SWIFT (where money is transferred overseas but takes a few days) and Ripple does these transactions within seconds, enabling money to flow between corporations and countries with ease as and when it is needed without delay, thereby dramatically improving the operation costs of corporations all over the world - banks and companies transferring money to subsidiaries for whatever business reasons and thereby improving economies of countries and companies that adopt it and hopefully leading to greater economic growth and prosperity.
Ripple has an existing global client base and usage of trillions of existing legitimate dollars of transactions, and everytime it its used to make a transaction a tiny fraction of the token is "burned" thereby reducing the availability of the coin and in theory increasing its value overtime by its mere use which will equate to billions of daily transactions.
Its a long term hold and most of the major Investment/ trading growth gains by investing in XRP will have been realized over the past year but it should still grow in value over the longer term.
RE: Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin: What is Ripple?