Is there any rational economic reason to purchase XRP early? Deflation is a main economic reason to buy bitcoins earlier. However, is there any rational economic reason to purchase XRP early? As far as I know OpenCoin is not clear on distribution policy. The might be giving away billions of XRP at some point.
1) OpenCoin has been clear on how many XRP they are going to distribute, they have been secretive only about how they are going to do that. And that's fine, since otherwise people might try to game the system before their distribution starts.

2) You might buy a few XRP if you need them, or you can buy a lot of XRP if you want to speculate (i.e. you think their value will rise)