Sounds more like Ripple bought a slave.
Huh?
Why XCP is valuable?
Is XCP to XCP protocol like XRP to Ripple protocol?
Thanks
Ripple is distributed, Counterparty is also decentralized.
They way I understand it is that XCP is not meant to be an alternative currency, i.e. you wouldn't buy a pizza with it. It's the internal token of the Counterparty platform, it represents stake in the protocol (e.g. for foundation voting, etc), and is used for various spam fees inside the protocol.
Most importantly, XCP is the fuel for smart contracts. No more XCP can ever be created, and XCP are being used up for the running of each execution step of a decentralized application (a.k.a. smart contract). It will not be possible to compensate the running of Dapps without XCP.
NOTE: It's important to keep in mind that many things are being called smart contracts nowadays (even multi-sig), but the difference here is that XCP smart contracts are fully programmable (turing-complete) and entirely peer-to-peer (while some other services are centralized).
So basically:
it's the main currency of the smart contracts system (
very underrated)
* it is available on exchanges
* it is necessary for spam fees
* it's deflationary, and supply is decreasing asymptotically
* there was NO pre-mine or pre-sale of any kind
* it is used for foundation voting regarding the future of Counterparty
The coolest thing that the Ripple gateway makes possible are instant-transactions with tokens. Combine that with the smart contracts system, and XCP is a beast.