I am a lot less jaded than you. I don't see crypto as a direct threat to banking or vice versa. There is room for both and the two are not mutually exclusive. Ripple is its own thing. Personally, I like Ripple. It solves several serious problems. It will supplant SWIFT and ACH, and will likely work as an add-on to traditional financial transactions the way most transactions operate today anyway. When you swipe your card at a POS terminal, you have a merchant acquirer, you have a payment network, you have a merchant bank and you have a customer bank. All of these processes are interconnected to allow for verification of funds and authorization of a purchase. The current system is slow and outdated. Ripple can fix that.

I see BTC as the gold standard. A store of value with little practical applicability. It is too cumbersome. In less than a decade it is already outdated tech. Litecoin is silver. Another store of value that seems stable in spite of past pump and dumps in both those currencies. Ether will address contracting. And the host of other altcoins that have a purpose will thrive in their niches. It is the tech that matters to me, not the coin. The coin is the vehicle for driving the tech. And the tech will eventually disrupt every sector of our economy. That is a good thing. And I think the banks see the writing on the wall. Banks won't go away. Many will coopt different aspects of the technology. They have to. But I don't believe there is a vast conspiracy afoot. It is the logical progression of new technology disrupting traditional financial models.