Yes, it's the first coin ever created, but it's slow and expensive (unless you're using the lightning network which most people and businesses don't).
How come Ripple which is the cheapest and one of the fastest ones - failed investors since 2018 and never reached back to the all time high of $3ish and those who believed in Ripple got 0 yields and a slap in the face, and yet this slow & expensive currency is the holy grail everyone is talking about?
There's perks to being the first and most trusted cryptocurrency in the market. That's pretty much what bitcoin has mostly going for itself nowadays. At the same time, Ripple's not without its flaws as well, so between bitcoin and ripple, the latter doesn't sound so appealing anymore considering that it's not as valuable, and at the same time comes with its own sets of flaws and allegations that it has yet to fix. Bitcoin on the other hand is already established, with its growing userbase, people who held their coins from 2008 and have yet to sell being basically the foundation of the industry. And not to mention a more trustworthy system than Ripple when it comes to sending money across large distances.
Ripple's not as decentralized as bitcoin too, which is something that a lot of people in the crypto world makes a big deal out of nowadays, and since it's not decentralized it doesn't look as appealing to people compared to bitcoin. Perhaps next time, use a different coin to compare bitcoin against cause in all honesty, Ripple couldn't hold a candle against bitcoin.