Ripple is a trademark of OpenCoin Inc, a private for-profit company. I am breaking their Terms of Service by using the trademark Ripple without permission. Sue me.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust thats required to make it
work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of
fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our
money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles
with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them
not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make
micropayments impossible.
With Bitcoin, you hold your own money. You control it.
With Ripple, you don't hold money. You hold debt, IOUs. You hold debt issued by a "gateway", a central authority.
With Bitcoin, miners are required to use their computational power to earn new Bitcoins and transaction fees.
With Ripple, OpenCoin Inc issued themselves 100 billion ripples. They promised to only keep half (50%) for themselves.
With Bitcoin, nobody can spend your money without your private keys.
With Ripple, as the server source code has not being released and it is still proprietary, OpenCoin Inc can change the rules and spend your money.
Bitcoin is v2.0 of money - where you control it in a democratic process via mining. Core network rules are embedded in open source code.
Ripple is v1.1 of money - building on top of existing central banks, and fiat money.
Learn more:
http://ripplescam.org/I was waiting for something like this. I always wondered why I never got any real answers to; "How many people control Ripple?". Bitcoin is
and only decentralized markets should handle it. This form of "decentralized" thinking will keep bitcoin being "bitcoin".