On the other hand, the only service I've needed to convert bitcoins between dollars so far has been localbitcoins, and I'm not sure what would motivate me to use a ripple gateway for that purpose. I can understand the benefit of ripple gateways as a stable pricing mechanism for the whole network, but from an individual's perspective, I don't see what benefits it offers. People already have many places they can go to convert dollars to bitcoin so I'm not sure where the motivation will come from to bring mass adoption of the Ripple system. If you were to draw a comparison between Ripple adoption and Bitcoin adoption, what new benefits would you say Ripple offers the individual over what options are already available for the individual? What drives the individual to choose Ripple over all other options? For Bitcoin, this is incredibly clear to the end consumer, without any need to understand how it works; it makes payment a hell of a lot easier than all tradition methods before it and lowers fees. What does Ripple have to bring to the table that is a clear benefit to an individual who has not looked at the Ripple technology and has no understanding of how Ripple is supposed to benefit the world? If I want to convert currencies, I would go to a business that offers currency conversion, I would then give them one currency and expect for them to hand to me the currency I asked for... why would I care how this business does this for me? As the end consumer, all I care about is that I'm given the currency I asked for in exchange. So why does the end-consumer care about Ripple anymore than any other crypto-currency?