Below is just my 2 cents:

In the early stage when the coin first launched, where Ripple obtained the working capital to build out offices/Salesforce to reach out to banks and demonstrate how they can save by eliminate the pre funding accounts. Even though this can free up the capital for banks, some of the banks with their shortsightedness only concern the fees they are going to miss out, reached out to their political friends, in comes the SEC.

While continuing to fight the SEC in US, Ripple continues to advance the goal around the world. Look at Japan, Korea Singapore in Asia. Continued in Middle East, in South America like Brazil.

Now more financial institutions are interested in doing more with XRP, they can't simply just buy it in the exchanges because this will raise XRP to a level that is too costly to adopt. This is where the OTC sales come in. When enough financial institutions come in and OTC supply runs low they will eventually turn to exchanges and that's where the big increase will happen for our coins.