You cannot compare Ripple to neither BTC or not even ETH.
As of today, BTC is still being mined by people willing to put their own time and investment into maintaining a mining setup. There is no centralized party that asks you to buy bitcoin or invest in mining it.
Even ethereum has a mining system but they are now dreading dangerous waters with the PoS model. Otherwise, the emissions are fair enough, although unlimited, which can again be a point of contention.
Ripple on the other hand is a classic premine. What else do you need as proof except the fact that the founders have made over 600 Million dollars by selling billions of the tokens that they simply gave to themselves? Ripple is basically the biggest fish. The next target i believe are going to be the stablecoins, exchange coins like BNB and any of the other tokens issued by major, well-known entities in the space.
Ethereum conducted their ico in 2014 same xripple: the investors are given tokens in return for their investments.
Ethereum is minable. Only a portion of the supply was given in the form of ICO. Ripple was a 100 billion premine out of which the so called Ripple foundation still holds 55 billion. Oh, and apparently, Garlinghouse and buddies made 600 million dollars from selling it.
Where do you think all that money went or will continue to go with retail buyers buying up this shit? All this while they do unreal marketing about how banks will adopt their platform. By the way, they portray themselves as promoters of Ripple platform. XRP itself is just a side note on the main website. They even pretend to having it open for developers. Like any sane developer would touch them with so many other easier and cheaper options available.
Its just too bad that so many people fell for their scam. The SEC should hopefully force them to compensate the retail buyers who fell for this elaborate, slick scam.
What will be interesting to see is which of the non-minable premine Alts are going to be questioned next? Those who have a lot of exposure to Alts must carefully weigh their options. BTC is and will always be the safest bet. Its fair to produce and does not promote itself except through users and the community itself. None of us have "stake" in it. We just use it because it is interesting and enables trustless exchange.