The simplest way to understand the benefits of Ripple to Bitcoin, is to just look at Gox.  If Gox had been plugged into Ripple, users would had flexibility over their Gox IOU's. While an exchange closing is never going to have positive results, those IOU's could have still been moved into other currencies, like Bitstamp.BTC or XRP and then moved into any other currency where liquidity exists. This is much like what Bitcoinbuilder did, except you don't need a central clearing house to move your IOU's.  Instead, Gox users have taken a total lost because they prefer centralized exchanges over distributed exchanges.  Why?  IDK...maybe a few more need to fail before people finally get it.