> Sure, if you entirely change the definition of fiat currency.

It's worth noting that the definition of "fiat" in economics depends on which economist you ask. From Famous Myths of "Fiat Money", Dror Goldberg (2005):

> Monetary economics has an ideal construct of its own. It is what economists call "fiat money." This is an object that has no intrinsic value and is not convertible into anything. An implicit assumption in the definition is that no one is forced to use such money and that the money has no other legal status such as legal tender. Acceptance of such money is entirely discretionary and based exclusively on the expectation that others would accept it too, even though no one else is forced to accept it (Wallace 1980).

> Interestingly, monetary economists do not claim that their "fiat money" concept is fictional. On the contrary, they identify it with the modem money we use in reality. Legal scholars and laypersons call the money we actually use by the same name since "fiat" refers to its status as legal tender. Monetary economists usually ignore this status.

I personally prefer the definition you use, because it fits nicely with the non-monetary definition of "fiat", but it seems arguments over what constitutes fiat often devolve into arguments of semantics given the term's ambiguous history.

> speculation driven by scarcity

which makes it interesting as to why Ripples get "so much" value as a currency that has so many "coins". From Coinmarketcap[1], the circulating supply of ripples is 38,531,538,922 while bitcoin is limited to 21,000,000.

The other interesting thing is that Ripples "distribute" its coin as opposed to letting miners mine them.

I know nothing about economics so I would be interested to know why people put much value on Ripples. (disclaimer: I myself invested 6000 ripples just because they are currently cheap compared to the market cap they have.)

[1]: https://coinmarketcap.com

Ripple is not decentralized at all. They've zero intention to bring decentralization, all they're trying to do is give banks a technology that can speed up remittances. Why do you need blockchain for that specially if you will be using banks anyways? Why can't banks speed up remittances on their own. Just do some basic search on the guy who created it, stellar lumens, mt gox, 70% tokens held by a few company individuals(although they say it is locked etc)

not suggesting that they are not credible or anything but I think their technology shouldn't excite people that much. And may be rather than public funding this bank's side project, perhaps banks can use some of their profits to develop this on their own or with Ripple or at least may be it should be funded by large investors who have large stakes in banks. Just ponder upon, why should you fund this experiment/technology?

> because they are currently cheap compared to the market cap they have

This sentence doesn't even begin to make sense...

The absolute value of any of these tokens is completely irrelevant. Same as it is for a US$ or CAD. You can define your own "decadollar", worth $10, get everyone to switch, and it would make absolutely no difference to the economy.

Why people put money in certain things is always a discussion, well the financial markets are better representative of people's opinion. Right now it is couple of billions in market cap. I agree with you and I'm very skeptical. But they at least seem to be doing something. What about 100s of other cryptocoins, just look at their github repos - nothing at all and they're worth hundres of millions(atleast as of now).