Carton, would it be fair to say that the Lightning Network would function like Ripple but with a few differences like, Lightning channels are backed by real Bitcoins while a Ripple "trust" channel is backed by nothing but an IOU?
Are you saying that BTC is backed by something else like gold and not just IOU's
Ripple is fantastic apart from it being owned by bankers but lets face it the BTC miners
and development team are taking us for dick-heads with the speed and fees so maybe
your being a little bias towards XRP with all due respect