Again, this sounds great if you just have a few hops. But once you get to a large amount, people will start realizing they're losing all their money because of covering for scammers, people who died, etc.
The number of hops is irrelevant. How many people you trust and how reliable they are has nothing to do with how many hops a payment takes.
No, it is relevant because people will stop using Ripple the more times they have to pay
for other people. The more hops there are, the more likely this is going to happen.
Holding ripple is just about the worst thing you can do right now.