Very good analysis. This shows many of the reasons I find XRP and XLM to be sketchy assets. Expecially coupled with the not decentralized network. These are not cryptocurrencies.
I wish you made it more clear what the actual purpose of XRP is in the first place: a method to make less hop transactions between currencies.
Ripple's Consensus Ledger is very different than XRP
The one place you leave out is this difference. The Ripple Labs Consensus Ledger product certainly is described by your post fairly well. Everything that references XRP however, is not in fact a required component of the RCL network. While I will not argue about its possible utility, I will say that the current investors do not know what they have bought into and I am not certain how long this speculation can last (cough polo).
You have to understand what XRP is actually for. The Ripple Consensus Ledger (the thing that all the banks are using) is designed to allow value transfer between different currencies with a sort of hopping between different market makers. This happens without the utility of any XRP (yeah yeah fees, not the point here). XRP was designed as a way for many market makers to make a paring with - thus allowing for many transactions to occur with only one hop: curr1:->:XRP:->curr2
The value is skyrocketing due to many factors, not many of which are due to its merits as a crypto in the first place. if you can even call it a crypto - centralized...
-Me somewhere else.
This bit of added information is appreciated for a beginner like myself.
In addition to Kyle's great explanation above there is one other point. Ripple's block-chain technology is what is primarily being pushed by Ripple. The Ripple network has the potential to save banks 33% of their remittance costs; however, if those banks use XRP as the transfer-of-value unit, total transaction costs can be cut by 60% versus what is currently paid. This is how Ripple will try to promote XRP. Whether or not XRP ever ends up being used by large financial sectors, I believe Ripple's current business plan will definitely make them a front runner in working alongside banks that need to badly update from their current practices.