XRP's rise was actually true for the airdrop. But after people bought airdrop tokens, they sold their XRP for profit. So they were totally on the profit target. Later, they probably worked with eth and ltc as alternatives.
It's better if you are seeing what happened with ripple before try to argue it. ripple was facing a big problem that can kill the company anytime. It's not about the airdrop or profit taking.
People are massively moving their XRP into the better coin like ethereum or even bitcoin. Some legit coins below ripple have been getting the pump due to the migration by XRP holders to the new coins.
Im not getting any surprise to see that consider so many people were accusing ripple too.