And think about this: OpenCoin will hold to 50% of the total Ripples created. You need to grant them a LOT of trust to place money in XRPs. They can crash the market with a fart, and they may be very well decide to hold onto 80% on the XRPs. Or to 90%. They won't tell you, because they don't know, they will just do what it suits best to them.
Now compare that shit with BTC, my friend.
You only need to trust them if you hold XRP. Who cares if the XRP market crashes when you're using Ripple as a distributed cryptocurrency exchange?
What are you talking about? You do not exchange cryptocurrency in Ripple. You exchange a) XRP's or b) other cryptocurrencies IOU's
IOU's which owner can default or decide not to honor them. Only thing which is not an IOU in Ripple are Ripples - quite convenient for OpenCoin, don't you think so?