Good on ya’!!! You’re coming around the curve :-) Realizing that Ripple is significantly more than a value holder like BTC or LTC is good.

There are a few points that you made which are a little off, a few aspects of the protocol that you missed and a few logical steps that you have yet to make.

First off, the consensus ledger is on a distributed network. It is not centralized. It is not run by the gateways. You can set up a server yourself and run rippleD….I am in the process of doing so myself. Here is an image you help you understand the different types of networks.




Ripple Labs doesn’t ‘control’ the Ripple network. It is much more of a guide-on-the-side. In much the same way ICANN doesn’t ‘control’ the internet. Their future functions are to be funded by the XRP they retained.

In short, it seems that you focused on the banking-like aspect of Ripple. It is also a foreign exchange market. It is also a payment system.

The vision is MUCH larger than what you’re seeing. Just as every business, bank, person, etc. has an email address, all will….should….could…what have you….have a Ripple account. When my bank opens an account, ALL of it’s members will have access to the ripple network. When my employer opens an account, they can pay me directly through the network (instead of through my bank). At this early stage, gateway’s look pretty significant……but ‘gateways’ are only really needed until such a time as all the financial systems are federated.

You can buy XRP anonymously through sites like Ripplewise. Your BTC are bridged directly into the system. Your account will stay as anonymous as you want it to be.

Ripplescam.com is a joke. Have you noticed the dates or the comments? All of the dates were prior to Ripple going open source. Many of his points can be categorically dismissed, as you can download the code yourself from github and check. The author of the post will not update his position with this information nor has he allowed any new posts since July….especially any that undermine his assertions.

I have read your post as thoroughly as I could. I'm sorry to say, but I got lost on a couple of your examples. I'll study them a bit closer later....or perhaps someone else can answer them....

I was in your position just 8 weeks ago....trying to critically deconstruct Ripple. It took me and a group of friends 2 weeks to fully get our heads around 'trust lines' .... once we did, we found it to be an over-blown issue. Other than to one gateway, most users will have no reason to use trust lines.

Now my friends and I all feel 100% certain that Ripple is an inevitable evolution to a higher form of financial networking.