Well, Ripple has a great platform for banks to compete with Bitcoin but again it's not the idea of decentralization and hence doesn't fall under the category of democratic cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. On the other hand, I do see growth opportunities of XRP if someone is willing for speculative gains out of it. I don't think it's going to overtake Bitcoin in any way because, at any given point, decentralized power would be much more than the centralized power and we will see multi-fold increase in Bitcoin user base along with the improvements in core areas such as transaction fees.
You got some strange ideas in your head about bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not democratic. There are no bitcoin elections. You do not have a say in how it’s developed, mined or exchanged for fiat. It does not favor social equality and it is not egalitarian in any way. The only way I can see bitcoin mimicking any current democracy is that the very small minority of rich people control all of the wealth.
Bitcoin is nowhere near decentralized. 99.995% of the humans on the earth have no idea how to code C++ and think internet protocols are those red marks you get on your genitalia when you masturbate to internet porn. These people rely on the 0.005% that do understand it to tell them bitcoin is working fine. That leaves development completely centralization. Most people (even computer savvy people) on this forum still have no idea how Ripple works.
Mining (bitcoins security system) is in the hands of a very few wealthy mining consortiums (based in some of the most oppressive countries in the world, btw) that meet regularly to determine the future of bitcoin. This small group is so powerful that they were able to stop a necessary blocksize increase from happening. That’s a more centralized system and has far fewer members than the US governments executive office of the president which has over 4000 people working there.
Bitcoin exchanges are limited to one or two separate entities located in a small handful of countries and have proven to be the most manipulative component of the bitcoin ecosystem. BTCe and MtGox manipulated and robbed tens of thousands of people worldwide. Coinbase (americas powerful bitcoin exchange) is in the middle of an internal audit because they discovered insider trading happen right under their noses. That is the least decentralized part of the whole system.
You need to get those crazy notions out of your head, wake up and smell the roses because they smell like shit.