My theory to explain the price surge is that cryptotraders are looking for non-correlation against Bitcoin which is currently trading at such a high value that it is making a lot of people nervous. Ripple is the largest coin that didn’t participate in the rapid marketcap gains that the BTC bullmarket pulled ethereum, litecoin, etc into. A lot of traders hear ‘centralized blockchain’ and think that makes it a good hedge against bitcoin’s distributed nature - doesn’t seem to be a lot of understanding about how these bank partnerships work or what an investment in an XRP token actually gets you.