Bangs head on desk.
A lot of people with more money than sense will probably jump in to it hoping it's the next bitcoin. If you figure out which bit they carefully are not mentioning though, you'll be thinking "But why?".
First lets buy in to Ripples. It's the same problem you have with bitcoin. Somehow you need an exchange, and you need some ripples, because ... they vanish every time you do a transaction. M'kay ... So ... I need my Dollars in there somehow, because it says I can do that, but not how. I'm presuming they have some clever idea how to get cash from an account in to the Ripples account. This worries me. Any bank backing for this by any chance?
Oh. And I need some Ripples. I can't just buy those on Ripple with my Dollars in there, because I need Ripples for a transaction. So I need to do that then ... O.o
Hey. I just realised. I'm entering all this information on a single website. Can I have my account stored locally? Well sort of. It's in browser javascript at the moment that does store all the information locally, but buried somewhere in your browser cache and plug in settings. That sounds super fun and not at all prone to go wrong whatsoever. Glad we cleared that up then. Good talk. The information must also get stored on all the servers that keep being mentioned. Apparently all kinds of people are eager to run validating nodes because (I kid you not), straight from Ripples own wiki:
"Who will run validating nodes?
Anyone, with a reputation, who wants to support the network will run a validating node."Blinks. Uhm. Ok. Moving on!
Now I spend my Dollars on some Euro's. (This is the only good part about Ripples), through a distributed exchange. So if someone matches my offer, it gets filled. That's pretty clever stuff when you might only get part orders filled, and you're trusting that network transaction, because it doesn't seem to be being verified in anything like the same way as bitcoin. There's lag in bitcoin transaction for verification. Anyway ...
I've got my Euro's and lost a few Ripples. How do I get my Euro's out again?
You mean I need to find someone who will buy Euro's from a Ripples account and give me Euro's in my pocket? Wait what ...? Oh and it costs me some more Ripples to do it ... Nice.
Unless of course there's some bank stepping in behind this to say "Don't worry, we'll exchange Ripple Euro's for real Euro's at the exchange rate of x". I'm almost wondering if this is a part bank backed effort to kill bitcoin.
It's DOUBLE the bitcoin problem + tiny ripples vanishing?
The sad bit is, the same witless crew that just ran up a $260 bubble on Bitcoin will rush over to it, with no understanding of it. The anti-bitcoin foghorns will then declare Bitcoin 2 has arrived. And after a few months people will figure out that actually it's cheaper moving money in Bitcoin. What damage it'll do to bitcoin is any one's guess. Right now, laying low might be no bad move for BTC. It coped pretty well with a speculation bubble, but public opinion is determined to see it die. I'm not sure why. Frankenstein like "We don't understand it! Kill it!" going on.
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