An overal design goal is also to keep it as simple as possible.
First because it is more realistic that it gets developed some day.
Second it is easier to understand and use.
Open Transactions or Ripple are very advanced and complex solutions. It is even for tech people like here in the forum difficult to really understand it (and trust it). For non-tech savvy people it would be even more difficult. A simple system would help that people really use it and therefore create market liquidity.
Is OT really that complex? It seems like the API should be pretty straightforward to program to, and then you just make a simple GUI for it (you don't have to worry about all the other 'advanced' stuff the OT server does).
I should not have mentioned OT/Ripple as I dont know them really well....
I just was trying a while ago to really understand both concepts and spent some time on it but sorry, I failed. In both systems at least I didn't understand how the fiat money (not IOU) comes into the system without centralized entities (like exchanges, banks -> gateways).
IMO a very important part is that the system does not depend on centralized elements. Otherwise why we bother with all the stuff at all, building a centralized system is much easier...
You can say BTC use as well centralized exchanges.
YES, that is exactly the problem I am trying to solve.