Quote from: misterbigg on May 11, 2013, 06:37:35 PM

Quote from: Piper67 on May 11, 2013, 06:09:02 PM

Not quite mutually exclusive, I'm afraid. It all depends on the endgame. If you believe the Ripple developers, then yes, they would be mutually exclusive. But as long as you can trade XRP for BTC, then it's also possible (with varying degrees of likelihood) to make money by defrauding the public with XRP.

Somewhat valid point, but the mitigating factor is the amount of resources that have gone into Ripple. They've developed the consensus protocol, the server and client software, and have I think 20 or more full time employees. They've also secured venture capital funding. It's hard to imagine that their intention at the outset was to defraud the public. A lot of the ideas behind Ripple are simply brilliant. If it's a scam then its practically indistinguishable from the real thing!

the way to solve this issue is for OpenCoin to not hold any XRP back, release the code as open source, then buy in to XRP's just like everyone else so everyone starts off at the same place. this is the only way they will succeed IMO.