I still don't understand the valuation of, nor XRP itself. It now is at over $2.55 which means that the total volume of XRP (there are 100 billion of them) is worth US255bn - equivalent to the market cap of the world's 15th most valuable company. Larger than the GDP of Finland, a world class economy. Yes GDP and this coin's appreciation are different animals but the comparison here is one of sheer scale. A quarter of a trillion US$ is immense regardless of qualifications.
From what I have read, XRP is not being used for intra-bank transfers. What some banks use is the Ripple Protocol. XRP may currently be used to trade currencies that have no regular trading pairs, but it's difficult to find independent verification that this is so and if so, at what volumes. Typically such trades are being done with USD as intermediary and there's no real need to disrupt that trade. Nor to have an intermediary that is this volatile.
The Ripple protocol is what is valuable to banks, they may or may not embrace it. It's valuable to move funds: banks need a cryptocoin that is fully pegged to the currency that is being moved between accounts. Ripple's protocol does, but XRP certainly does not fill that need. XRP simply is far too volatile even within the 4 second period that a transfer takes. XRP really is a proof of concept that has turned into a non-voting stock in the ripple company, isn't it? Is that all it is?
Regardless of all this, the markets have bought into XRP and with several exchanges rumored to add it (rumors that include Coinbase), the outlook continues to be bullish and many technical analysts on tradingview.com have no trouble predicting that i'll head over $4 in the short term. Like most traders I hold some in anticipation of its continued growth.
What Ripple should do is to quickly turn that value into a war cheast to buy real assets and link the XRP coin to that value.