I think there is no denying that if the theorems behind money are not something your brain is trained to think about, understanding Ripple *is* hard. Sure, everyone gets what an IOU you is, but that still leaves you with a dozen questions about how everything comes together in this particular system. What are the implications of paying with IOUs, what does it mean for me when I use Ripple?

It certainly took me a while to get it. The fact that the Ripple site is focussed on promoting an XRP giveaway and touting high-level enduser benefits probably isn't helping.

In fact, even after I had a good understanding of Ripple itself, I needed to listen to this interview with David Schwartz to get me excited about the "rippling through accounts" feature as something to facilitate private lending ("money as a social resource" is the phrase he used).

http://letstalkbitcoin.tumblr.com/post/50482657399/lets-talk-bitcoin-episode-007-ripple-the