Quote from: k99 on December 23, 2013, 07:51:00 PM

But there is a big difference of XRP to BTC. There is a for-profit company behind it and it owns most of it. I know they say that they will give their XRP away some day and play fair, etc..... but that has to me no value (who knows who will own the company in the future?).

Sure, but that's not what you were saying. Also, fairness doesn't enter into it. Ripple Labs created the software and the initial ledger, and they get to do what they want with the money. No one is under any obligation to buy and Ripple Labs isn't under any obligation either. The question is not whether it is fair, but whether it is in people's best interests to buy XRP. Since the rippling functionality is very useful for buying or selling Bitcoin and since you only need a tiny amount, I was happy to buy a little bit. I've received much more in a handout (~1000 XRP) and I've made ~200 "mining" them at computingforgood.org.

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And I think XRP are not intended to be used as money to buy things. They are introduced to make the payment system work and prevent spam.

Correct. However, if Ripple is successful that means XRP will become valuable and very useful as a currency. This is how Ripple Labs aims to make a profit on their investment.

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For me all that sounds much more as a trap to infect BTC with Fiat-like properties. To bring people to the point that they use IOUs for BTC instead of BTC directly (from their own wallets). If its faster, more convinient, maybe adds some small earnings with lending (interests) many people who dont care about the original motivation behind BTC could use it.

It sounds as if you've made up your mind already and are inventing arguments to attack Ripple. The IOU and foreign exchange systems are enormously useful for Bitcoin trading. The lack of distributed exchanges is Bitcoin's Achilles heel at the moment, and Ripple is changing that.

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Look at the gold ETFs. Many people use them to speculate because they are more convinient to trade and they take the risk that the emitter is lying about the backing of physical gold. At the end the most people using that does not care about the different nature of gold against fiat. They use it to make fast profit. Like gold ETF has not much in common with real gold but very much with fiat, BTC IUOs are much more like fiat then like BTC.

I wouldn't trust any of the gateways to hold my money for long periods, and that includes Bitcoin exchanges too. For short durations and small amounts, it's fine.

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As I said before the finance industry will love Ripple, and if they will not adopting it they will probably come with something similar soon.
Ripple could be a way that they keep control as well as the state. The US based ripple company and the gateways are for me too vulnerable.

Gateways are only there for convenience, the system can operate underground in a fully P2P manner if necessary.

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I am not completely against the concept of colored coins and a layer which lets them interchange easily.
But that should come for me with the same ideas like the one behind BTC.
No need for trust to companies and states, open source and decentralized.
I think some day we will see applications for exchanging fiat or real world items to crypto with these characteristics.

There will be a role for both trusted and trustless services. Ripple offers both.