ok suppose a scenario where they hide a flaw in the network in the interest of pumping the value of their freely self-issued XRP? how does that work out?
How would such a flaw work? How could they "pump" the value of their own XRP and not everybody else's? And if there's a flaw that undermines trust in Ripple, how could it not also undermine trust in XRP?
these types of manipulations go on all the time in the real world of stocks.
its called insider trading. insiders get first hand knowledge of a problem within the company and sell their stock prior to the news reaching the general public. the same could easily happen with OpenCoin the way it's set up.