We can start by not requiring a mining hardware race just to protect the network. Torrents don't need ASICs to protect their files. I realize it's all much more complicated than that, but not when you take the "money generation" part of it. Ripple could be Bitcoin's absolute replacement, as long as we can build a network of *actual* trustworthiness. Right now it'd be a bunch of random dudes on bitcointalk.org who've never met before granting frivolous amounts of trust that could never be recouped if they were scammed.