Of course it is instant - any centralised payment solution is instant as they live in a a zoo rather than a jungle. That's what I'm saying, Ripple looks like a duck but is not a duck, it has some features of a cryptocurrency but lacks the core one - decentralisation. Also its blockchain is screwed - initial 30k transaction or so are lost. And on a personal level I dislike this company as I was constantly removed from their channels asking why their escrow in 2017 hold more coins than their total supply. They couldn't even get it right. D. Schwartz is probably a decent programmer, and I sort of admire how they became rich by building a lame replica of an expensive watch (bitcoin) - I read all of his posts on bitcoin stackexchange some time ago while learning about the industry...
XRP (or Libra) has decentralization, just not in a form that is accessible to the general public, because that brings in all sorts of other issues.
If you look at how we generally solve problems in the world, the idea that the untrusted general public should be involved as a matter of principle is ludicrous, because that requires significant defenses against bad actors at multiple levels.
Bitcoin didn't even solve this problem, it just raised the economic barrier for bad actors to cause trouble. In practice, many smaller cryptocurrencies are highly vulnerable to 51% attacks, but even Bitcoin mining power is highly centralized to a few companies.
I think the way XRP or Libra solve things (in principle) has very strong arguments going for it, but they are pragmatic, not idealistic. I haven't heard any good arguments on how the way Bitcoin solves things is so beneficial that it becomes a worthwhile tradeoff. I don't see why it should be the defining factor on what is or isn't considered a cryptocurrency.
