I dont think its a scam, I just dont think it will work. A giant digital IOU system is cool in theory, but fairly worthless in practice.

As a person who owes other people $ and has a lot of $ owed to them IN REAL LIFE I will tell you it certainly doesnt make life easier.

Sure, 85% of the people involved are good for it, but being able to collect when you want to and when you need the $ just doesnt happen.

In the gambling world, which I am big in, when someone owes you a lot of $ you can SELL the debt but you usually take a big hit.

Lets say you beat a guy for $5,000 in Backgammon, he cant pay immediately but you know hes good for it and he is a know person in your circles.

What you do is go around to a few people and say, hey, Larry owes me $5k, will you buy it for $3500? So you get your dough NOW, but less...

Owed money doesnt equal the exact amount. Collecting is hard and just because someone owes doesnt mean they will pay on time or all at once.

For the simple reason that $5k in debt isnt actually worth $5k (because of issues collecting and the fact that time = money) ripple will fail.

Oh, and a central authority plans to "give away" the majority of the currency units? I dont see that ever helping the value of them.

Im not signing up for ripple and have ZERO interest in it. I have enough of that whole business in my real life to know its not worth it.