Again, this is not a good comparison. It is true that most bit coins are in the hands of early adopters, but they have nowhere near the same power to affect the value of each Bitcoin as OpenCoin has with Ripple. The can try to use their wealth to impact market forces, but they are in in full control of a protocol that, as of this moment, is closed and centralized.
Sure, I was talking about after the code has been released. Ripple won't be more than a promise until then. But Satoshi could dump his BTC at any time. Are you worried about that?
no one knows how many BTC Satoshi has. you are making a huge assumption.
not only that, Bitcoin is based on proof of work. those early adopters had to mine coins at their own time, expense and risk and had no idea they would rise from a price of essentially zero. others had to buy coins that could have stayed near zero as well.
OpenCoin has done nothing to earn the coins they're holding back except write code for a concept that may or may not work. Satoshi did the same but did not self issue.
MBigg makes some good points but i still think OpenCoin represents a centralized point of pressure that could be exploited.