I was asked recently what the differences were between Ripple and Zcash. The reasons I gave were:
-- Zcash (ZEC) has a limited supply of 21,000,000 (source: z.cash) coins, and Ripple (XRP) has 38,305,873,865 (source: cryptocompare)
-- XRP is a public blockchain, Zcash users can choose if they want their transaction public or private.
-- Zcash must be mined, and the current circulating supply is inflating until it eventually reaches 21,000,000 coins; XRP was created all at one time, and is all currently in circulation.
-- XRP deals directly with banks, the ZEC public blockchain is not directly involved with banks**.
-- Both are good investments if your goal is to turn money into more money.
I think that Zcash's privacy features offer a much more unique and impactful opportunity to the individual investor, and can even benefit corporations. Despite XRP not having anything particularly original about it for the individual consumer, it shows strong promise as institutions adopt their technology, as the value theoretically has to grow in order to create the necessary liquidity.
The market has been seeing a large selloff recently, but I haven't seen a good explanation yet as to why.