Mathieu, thanks for the thoughtful response. You bring up some good points, for sure.

Having worked with large banks in the past, I can tell you they do not move fast as far as tech is concerned. Because of their bureaucracy, they’d much rather hire a solution rather than implement one themselves. Getting large projects done at a big bank is akin to turning an aircraft carrier — you better be sure before turning because turning back on a dime has some — let’s say “issues”. So, personally, I don’t see big banks cloning Ripple and implementing on their own. As an example, they spent over 40 years with Swift, with it’s slow fulfillment and high cost, without doing something better on their own.

Adopting a potentially revolutionary technological innovation has risks as well, so they’d also much rather see someone else take the fall before proceeding. But, Ripple has 3 banking clients now, which will prove out whether or not their solution is as secure and can do transactions as reliably as SWIFT.

After that it all comes down to profitability.

I agree that if Ripple is the best crypto can do, then it will go the way of AOL as far as being taken seriously as a world-changer. I don’t think Ripple is the best Crypto can do — far from it. I do think it is taking a bold stance by taking on a financial institution and paradigm that has been in place since the 70’s (Swift), solving for a real world problem. If they show through their 3 banks that it is a viable alternative (and more profitable) then more banks will sign. Doesn’t mean all banks will sign and Swift will be superseded — may not be as binary as that.

Big “if” — I guess we’ll see ;-)

Lastly, I never said “Ripple value will shoot to the moon” (I might have said so in a different post, heh). I did say they could beat Bitcoin as number 1 in market cap if they succeed with their solution. Utility beating stores of value as my argument. “If” they succeed.