Talking only about XRP and not even mentioning the other cool features on RCL:
* XRP transaction settles on the ledger in a matter of seconds
* The fees for sending XRP are incredibly low
* There's no artificial limit on the "block size"
* RCL doesn't waste energy on mining
* XRP is not involved in shady dark web markets or criminal activity
* Its in Ripple's best interest financially to be a wise steward of the crypto-currency
This is an important point, because of the large XRP position held by the company. There's been a lot of speculation about motives but if you think about it logically, XRP is a valuable asset and it would be foolish to sell it recklessly while holding large quantities. Its in the company's best interests to act in a manner that is ethical and productive - harming the community of XRP holders is not a viable long term plan.
* Although RCL is still moving towards decentralization, its in Ripple's best interests to operate validators ethically
Its in Ripple's best interests to make sure that RCL operates ethically and fairly. Taking action that runs contrary to the spirit of a decentralized system is again not a viable long term plan. Look at Ethereum, they forked the network because they didn't like one of the contracts. And this, from a system which is supposed to enforce "code is law?"
* A hand-picked all star development team with over two centuries of collective experience.
* RCL is backed by a company that can afford to pay developer salaries
This last one is huge. Right now Bitcoin is going through a governance crisis. You've got the Core team which has been co-opted by Blockstream, they are paid by Blockstream, there's a massive conflict of interest. They won't increase the block size, and instead they are peddling this massively overcomplicated Segwit, for what appears to be ulterior motives. The opposing consensus is that they are intentionally limiting the performance of the Bitcoin system to make their commercial alternative (Lightning network) more appealing. And then you have bad actors which own all the social media for Bitcoin. The bitcointalk forum, the bitcoin subreddit, the bitcoin website, and the official bitcoin GitHub repository. Censorship rules the day on these sites.
* Anyone can develop software that runs on RCL
There's plenty of documentation on the wiki, and RCL is open-access. Want a better wallet? You can write it. Shopping cart? Nothing is stopping anyone from building applications that work with XRP. They can build exchanges, e-commerce applications, the sky is the limit. Has been from day one.
I think that if you compare XRP to BTC at this moment in time, in many ways it is superior. As a pure cryptocurrency XRP has many appealing features. All this and we have not even said a word about the non-XRP features.
I have also not mentioned any of the company's publicly stated plans such as ILP or the MM program (and these plans are great). If you look at XRP all by itself just with what's already there, its a great cryptocurrency and competes quite favorably with the others. XRP can fill all the use-cases that Bitcoin can, and do a better job of it for the reasons stated above. If people are excited about Bitcoin they should also be excited about XRP.
https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/2666-what-are-your-views-on-xrp/?page=14#comment-24440
