Except it seems they have a chicken/egg problem. The whole idea of using a crypto-currency is to avoid counterparty risk to the extreme (along with the speed/portability of digital media). That is the principle that most bitcoiners want in their currency. Here, we have Ripple/OpenCoin saying, hey look, theoretically we would have no incentive to dump our coins, stay closed source & centralized, harm other forks, comply with onerous government demands. However, the counterparty risk still currently exists. I don't care if they say, "We won't do that!". I want to know that they can't do that.

And for all the talk of a limited supply of coins, there is an argument to be made that any holder of a large enough % of total currency can act essentially as a central bank, albeit with an absolute cap. Would I feel better about the Federal Reserve's or Bank of Japan's policy if they had a hard limit on their currency of 100 quintillion dollars/yen? No, because the cap imposes no real limit on the immediate or mid-term future. I feel very uncomfortable using a currency where one entity effectively controls 99.99% of all currency units.