Ripple is centralized.
No it's not. Their network is decentralized. Sure they have pre-mine, but so do we.
Because Ripples exchange is distributed as opposed to centralized, the whole concept of co-location becomes fundamentally different. There is simply no central location near which you would co-locate for a speed advantage. Ripple exists on servers around the world, and anyone can easily spin up their own copy of a Ripple server for free. (The code is open source.)
https://ripple.com/blog/ripples-distributed-exchange-and-the-high-frequency-trading-arms-race/That's why I think decentralized marketplace in addition to decentralized exchange could be what launches Nxt above BTC. If Nxt users are able to create a specific marketplace using an API, then send the link via AM for download, which would then be viewable in nexern client. Users could then view/contribute to marketplace via a torrent style setup. We would create a huge irreplaceable economy.