You've mentioned this but the main reason i'm scared to invest in Ripple is that it has been pre-mined and most of the coins are held by the creators.
Ripple was pre-mined and the creators have only release a portion of the coins. They still hold over 50% of the coins in existence, maybe 60%. This alone has scared me off investing despite how good the technology behind Ripple is.
This means that 50% of XRP's market cap ($9,853,675,986) isn't in circulation, if it wasn't being held and was in circulation you could expect the price to approximately half. The reason they're holding onto so much is because they don't want the price to fall, they release a certain amount of coins each year to drip feed the supply and artificially inflate the price.
Agree that 50% of the Ripple coins are not in circulation that does worry me a bit as well and may stop investors to push it along even further. On the positive side the value of ripple coin is very stable. Even when bitcoin and etherum went north ripple stayed solid. That could show some majurity of the coin
Your post has created a good discussion around Ripple but not yet received any upvotes, mine aren't worth much but you deserve it.
I think in the future I may regret not investing in Ripple. But there are so many different coins and I only have a little to invest so I chose to avoid ripple because I simply am suspicious. Anyway good luck to all of you who hold XRP. Any increase in the crypto market is good for all of us :)