While I am not a fan of deflationary/stagnant economics, the one saving grace of XRP is that there will only ever be 100B tokens. As the "banker" token, that means a lot.
This is a big statement.
Because if you come out of the gate trying to flag yourself as the central banking coin, you have one advantage that no other central bank has: an absolute guarantee that no funny money is going to be minted: this is it, 100B and that's it.
So while Ripple Labs may have ninjamined every single coin and sold/airdropped the tokens in whatever way they decided, there was an implied promise underlying all these actions:
We, Ripple Labs, do solemnly swear, that we will spend this ninjamine to the best of our ability to bring as much value to the network as possible.
And so with XRP you had to trust Ripple Labs quite a bit, which immediately defamed XRP as a scamcoin that requires trust. This makes sense, as Bitcoin's #1 goal is security so obviously there would be a clash between the maximalists/idealists.
This tension was not eased by the aggressiveness and toxicity of the 'XRP Army' community. They are even worse tribalists than the Maximalists themselves, which is quite the accomplishment.
And what have we seen since that time?
Ripple Labs is embroiled in a lawsuit with the SEC. Did they cut and run? Did they make a deal? Did they try to save their precious money they had made from disappearing?
Nah.
They used their money to hit the SEC hard and bury them in paperwork and force them to allocate massive resources to this case. They are hitting them with every technical delay play in the book. It is crazy in this courtroom. This is a money attack on the SEC.
It doesn't matter if Ripple loses this court case. This is a FUCK YOU to the SEC from the cryptoverse. Like a serious, 'I may have lost this fight but I'm going to do as much damage as humanly possible to you personally.'
This is personal.
This is business.
And so I'm like wow the SEC is going to think twice before going after other networks that might also bury them in litigation. They can't open a case against hundreds of networks at once. They are out to make examples of the big boys and bring the pack to heel. Is that the kind of strategy that's going to work inside the cryptosphere? Well, I doubt it, but that's the SEC's playbook. I don't make the rules.
I still think there's a good chance that XRP spikes very hard during this mega bubble. That community is the ultimate representation of greed and tribalism in the cryptosphere. That is their community, and it is a strong and toxic one. They aren't going anywhere. Trust me. And don't forget that a ton of Ripple's stack is frozen due to the lawsuit. They aren't allowed to make moves at the moment.
And so XRP is invincible.
It doesn't matter what you think about it or the principal of the thing. I'll never ever own any XRP, but I still think it's clear they have an important part to play in all of this. They have their niche and their purpose. We don't get to weigh in if we agree or not. They exist: there they are. There is no argument.
And then there is the issue of the ninjamine. Whereas fiat can print to infinity, XRP can only be spent one time and then it's gone from the founder's pocket out into the ecosystem. Value being trapped inside the network gets distributed to every token holder, just like all the other cryptos out there.
It is quite ironic for the SEC to come out against Ripple when their economic policy is more fair than every fiat currency in existence. Why did they wait so many years to take action after such a long period of non-clarification? They came to make an example out of Ripple, and it looks like there's still a chance they lose the case. Expect XRP to instantly go x2 if that happens.
No matter what happens, the SEC thought they were going to slap Ripple with a nice settlement and be done with it. Instead they got an all out brawl of maximum paperwork money attack. It's a very good sign for everyone: don't mess with crypto.
A victory for Ripple is a victory for everyone. Even a defeat in this case is still a smaller victory for the cryptosphere at large. The message is simple and straightforward: we fight back; there will be a cost. This is an economic war for which system can scale the largest. There is no contest, only time needed to further development along. Flat-architecture wins, hands down. We are expanding exponentially into the future.