I recommend people new to crypto currency not get involved with ripple, it is centralized with backing from wealthy investors who surprising hold large amounts of ripple. Bitcoin, especially Litecoin and Doge is the crypto-currency to get involved with.
It looks like you confuse Ripple (the decentralized exchange) with XRP ("ripples") the native asset/cryptocurrency there.
Since XRP are given away cheaply or for free, I would not recommend people to invest serious money in XRP - if you are just interested in them (or in trading them or other things on Ripple) they are probably the easiest cryptocurrency to get a hold of via computingforgood...