This is what ripple is in my opinion. It is a company (Open Coin), backed by venture capitalists and rich silicon valley types. They looked at bitcoin and asked,"What's the best way for us to profit from it?"

Their solution was to make an alternate system which they would control. They also decided to create 100 billion xrp, of which their company would hold 50 billion or half.

Ripple is nothing more than some rich people trying to hijack the crypto-currency movement for their own profit. It is completely antithetical to the whole idea behind cryptocurrencies, which is wrenching control of OUR money from central banks and banksters. Ripple just replaces central banks with Open Coin. The whole thing stinks and their system sucks. You wanna place yourself back under a centralized system under somebody else's control then use (c)ripple.