>XRP is counterparty-free

You have 100 USD and 100 XRP in your ripple wallet and the gateway you deposited USD to fund your wallet closes shop, you are now left with the bag in the hand and you must trade 'em for another gateway's IOUs, or try to find someone to buy them from you.

It's a decentralized network of centralized debt obligations.

Same with BTC

well, I see you don't understand how Bitcoin works.

But the currency is not required for banks to actually use the system? I'd be all over this, but it seems banks are only interested in the Ripple tech, and don't require (a lot of) XRP to operate the Ripple tech.

Correct xCurrent doesn't require XRP and just the xRapid product uses XRP to process payments. The thought is that XRP would be a universal currency for the payment processing portion and separated from the xCurrent ledger solution.

They don't have to use it, but they'll save 30% on the cost of a transaction by using XRP. Why wouldn't they?

> it seems banks are only interested in the Ripple tech

No bank has ever said that. Some have said that they're not using XRP yet, but that's because they're simply beginning trial runs of the technology.

If you want to see that same tech in action but on a public blockchain, check out Stellar.

From someone with more authority than myself :) https://youtu.be/t66HFQDnezk?t=980

As in the video, people would say the same about Ethereum, and yet, Ethereum's community continue to grow and its exchange value continues to grow.

On the other hand, what does Bitcoin have to show? Its community has stagnated and fractured, use-cases have stagnated. As an outsider, it often feels like Bitcoin early adopters are just sitting back and just calling other people stupid.

Bitcoin has way more proof of work behind it than any other cryptocurrency ( I'm still trying to decide how important that is for bitcoins future)

distributed != decentralized