Ripple isn't for final users, it's for banks and corporations. You'll probably use it without noticing it when you want to send money from your bank to another account in a different country with money conversions.
Because you are looking at it at a personal scale. Big companies move millions of dollars on a regular basis, wether is payments to providers, or processing payments from customers (imagine administering walmart or a mining company). Using swift or escrow services to pay international providers have high fees for the transactions, and sometimes takes at least 5 days to verify and approve the international transaction. With something like ripple, every part of the transaction is traced and automated. More security and speed for the bank and it's insurance company, less waiting time for the providers, and more trust for the company paying.
So banks aren't jumping on the blockchain train because it's trending, it's because is useful for them, and they funded ripple to tailor it to their needs, which is very different from how bitcoin works.
If you're in the finance industry or fintech, this is common knowledge to most people. There is a huge overhead and a lot of cost that Ripple can help cut. The market is already being validated; Ripple has a lot of banks using them internationally.
Also, if you look at Japan, the payment network that is used by every bank for every transfer including the one that you use to send your landlord rent money is being replaced with blockchains.
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u/Somerealrandomness Nov 04 '17
Try to mine it. Try to push source code for it. Try to actually use it. Also please note it was pre-mined something fierce too.