You may find it disingenuous, but not all of us are gambling junkies.  Some of us actually want to see the tech bring real world change to people around the globe.  The fact that we can type in a forum shows we already have more than most.  You have a right to be self-centered in your view of the tech but you know what they say when you assume.  


There is nothing preventing the Ripple protocol from doing what you suggest.  The tech works.  What lacks in these early stages, is liquidity and as Tokeweed mentioned, gateways.  Remittence is one of the key things Ripple is designed to do, so as the infrastructure, market makers, etc., come online, you're going to love Ripple.  

Steps are just like sending from a Bitcoin wallet, except you can choose to send pesos with USD.  Real simple.  You could actually view the lack of liquidity for your currency pairs as an opportunity to make a market.  Sounds like money to be made if there's true demand for USD ->Pesos.


All you need is a Chinese gateway or a way for them to get money to any gateway.  Then they can move into whatever currency there is liquidity for.

Actually, most merchants are using Bitpay or Coinbase, so they never touch BTC.  Bitpay and Coinbase are dumping Bitcoin and capturing juicy spreads at the same time.  I'm not sure this talking head in the OP is correct though because it doesn't matter how many merchants you have, if consumers aren't buying them to pay for stuff.  This is just current BTC holders shopping, as is evidenced by a recent poll I saw at Coindesk, that said that 75% of merchants had seen little to no growth in revenue.  Of course, people can't spend what they don't have.  

So to say merchants are adopting Bitcoin, is really inaccurate.  BitPay and Coinbase adopted Bitcoin, merchants are still using the same old fiat.  They're just riding the hype and hoping to cash in on a little bit of the money current BTC holders have.  The price keeps dropping because consumer demand to buy BTC is not there.  It's really as simple as that.  If people wanted them, they'd buy them.  Numbers don't lie.  You can blame China if you want, that only highlights the lack of consumer demand from the rest of the world.

This is again, because the Ripple protocol is not a consumer facing product.  It's like saying when you walking in the bank, there's just a computer sitting there with all the access to facilitate payments, on their proprietary software.  How many customers would know how to do it?  How many would even bother to try?

Ripple will really start making sense for people as more products and services are built, integrating Ripple as their backend.  Many times, you may never know you're using a Ripple powered product.  Just as you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes at PayPal or the ACH and Swift systems, or yes, even SEPA.  Once you start having merchant tools for easy website integration, different payment networks integrating, the benefits will become crystal clear.  But development takes time and Ripple Labs is not in the business of developing the entire infrastructure around Ripple.

As for bank integration, RL's has made great strides, although as was said, these active discussions can't be made public and for obvious reasons.  But you can see the fruit of their labor in instances like this from David Andolfatto, Vice President at the St. Louis Fed.


Lastly, there are still people in this thread who just don't under IOU's as it relates to Ripple.  There's a disconnect here between:

1.  IOU's as a means of credit.  Meaning, you can buy now and pay later.  (False)
2.  IOU's as a representation of an actual asset balance.  (true)

The latter is what you can utilize in Ripple.  If you can't differentiate between the two, Ripple will never make sense to you.  Furthermore, the counter-party risk is not in the IOU.  The counter-party risk, is in the 3rd party who holds your assets.  The IOU is just a liquid representation of that balance.  Like when you go to the casino, your cash is exchanged for poker chips.  The poker chip is an IOU backed by your cash.  You can turn it in at anytime and get your cash or you can give it away or lose it to another player and they now have ownership over that cash, because they hold the chip. (IOU)

Same thing, you're just exchanging balances at 3rd parties.  What's really going to be cool and when the power of Ripple is really going to become apparent, is when the federation of payment networks takes flight.  Assume Paypal, Bank of America, HSBC, Bitsamp, and BTC-e were all gateways.  Since you're able to exchange balances, your going to be able to do all kinds of things.

From your BoA account, you could directly pay any merchant that accepts Paypal.  Direct balance exchange via IOU's, without central clearing in the middle.  
Or, you could send direct from your Paypal account to BTC-e, without wiring money or having to buy BTC, pay the fee, then transfer the coins, wait an hour.  You know the deal.    

You just exchange your Paypal balance for a BTC-e balance a viola, you have USD or BTC or NMC on BTC-e.  And someone who had a balance on BTC-e, now has USD in Paypal.  Confirmed and irreversible in seconds.  

The possibilities are limitless.  Now, we can move our balances around, like we do email.  We can send email to any @email address, thanks to SMTP.  Thanks to Ripple, we'll do the same with value because right now, a Paypal user can only send to a Paypal user.  A bank of america user can only send to a BoA user, etc.  It's like pre-SMTP email.  When you really sit back and think about it, it's totally mind blowing that we're still stuck in these closed systems.  
 

Lots of reasons.  Here's a few:

1.  It's currency agnostic
2.  It eliminates central clearing houses and centralized exchanges
3.  It federates payment networks (SMTP for money)

Overall, I just think Ripple makes sense and allows access to monetary freedom, for more people, while still allowing them to use their existing things of value.  Remittences for example, is a big reason I like Ripple.  I'm also a big merchant guy so, understanding merchants would prefer to make one integration and allow their customers to pay in any currency, while still receiving just USD, is huge.  That replaces the need for merchant accounts for credit cards, then a separate integration for each cryptocurrency you want to accept.  It's just common sense innovation, IMO.

Ripple does involve IOU's and that's a good thing.  XRP, however, is not an IOU.  It's an asset that exist within the network and stored without counter-party risk.


Ripple is doing plenty, Ripple isn't however, a consumer product so you're not going to get consumer focused marketing.  

No, not at all.  XRP can be stored without counter-party risk and doesn't require trust to send.  Thus, no IOU ever need be created for it.  It already exists within the Ripple network as an asset.  IOU's are representations of balances you hold, with 3rd parties.  Exchanges, banks, paypal, etc.

Both can be stored without counter-party risk and both prevent double spending, by design.  That is cryptocurrency....period. Distribution methods may differ, but that's irrelevant to me, especially with XRP's intended purpose, and that's not as a speculative commodity.  A currency is not defined by it's value but rather by its usefulness.  So from that perspective, you're right.  XRP is not Bitcoin...and fortunately so.  That allows XRP to remain useful in its purposes of spam prevention and bridge currency, and not just a means for a few people, to "get rich quick".

As has been said repeatedly, if you don't like any particular currency, don't use it.  Ripple is currency agnostic.  Use what you want, other people will use what they want.  Freedom baby!

XRP is not an IOU.  It's a deflationary, math-based currency, just like Bitcoin.  It prevents ledger spam and acts as a bridge between two currencies.  Say BTC -> XRP -> YEN.  And you don't have to necessarily use it, if there's a cheaper path.  

An IOU is just a balance that you have with a 3rd party.  If you go to your Bitstamp or Cryptsy account, it will display how much BTC, USD, etc you have with them, right?  That's your balance and that balance is an IOU.  They  "owe" you, X amount.  It's just an IOU that is trapped in a central entity.  (Well, of course Bitstamp is the largest Ripple gateway, so you can have access to your Bitstamp IOU's within Ripple.)

So again, with Ripple, instead of your IOU's being trapped and controlled by a central entity, you can move them freely into other things of value or even pay someone with them.  Which just means, you're transferring that balance, to someone else.  In Ripple, an IOU is not a means by which you can buy something now, and pay later.  It's a representation of actual assets you own.  When you exchange those IOU's, the asset balance is transferred to the new owner.  The IOU simply determines who now owns that balance.

+1 I had a whole post typed out but I honestly couldn't say it much better than that.  I will add, if your making a BTC -> BTC payment, you don't need Ripple.  Just send wallet to wallet.  What reality is showing though, is most merchants don't accept BTC, they accept USD and they require a middleman or central clearing house, to facilitate that transaction.  In this case, BitPay and Coinbase.

The best thing that happened to Ripple, was speculators and single-currency thinkers, not rushing to Ripple to "pump" the internal currency, XRP.  It's not a speculative currency.  I know that's hard for many of you to understand.  After all, that's all blockchain coins are good for...speculation.  Not knocking it, just saying, I get the limited thinking.

Ripple is the value web.  It doesn't take an ideological position as to which currencies the world will use and try to jam those down everyones throats.  Just as the web doesn't attempt to dictate what type of information is available.  Instead, it offers the ability to remove centralized exchanges and central clearing houses, allowing the use of IOU's, you already possess (In those exchanges, bank accounts, Paypal, etc.) and gives you freedom to exchange them for other things of value.  As apposed to having your IOU's trapped in those central entities.  Think Gox.  Total loss for people with IOU's there.  With Ripple, those same IOU's Gox is sitting on, could have been exchanged for other things of value, even after they halted withdrawals.  Even right now.  They're your IOU's after all.  Shouldn't you have control over them?  

Truth is, most of you should avoid Ripple at this point because the raw protocol is really beyond the comprehension of most novice crypto users.  Developers will love it.  No question about it, but where single currencies are very simple and easy to digest, Ripple is a true monetary system and monetary systems are very complex by nature.  Trying to fit Ripple into a "coin" box, will always leave you frustrated, confused and of course, blaming the protocol because it's something you don't understand.  Typical way of saving face, I suppose.

Nevertheless, hang in there.  Whether you get Ripple or not, it's going to change the way the world transacts and that is a good thing for Bitcoin and all things of value.  So don't make Ripple the scapegoat or competition to your little currencies.  Nope, your currencies are individually responsible for their own success or failure.  Ripple is just here to see that there's a way they can reach everybody, where the live, and with what they use locally as currency, without all the middlemen.  

Welcome to the world of distributed exchange.  The future is so bright.  

Why would this increase the value of BTC?  Maybe a temporary speculative pump but this doesn't get more people buying Bitcoin, does it?

I doubt it.  Like I said, most people will never own Bitcoins and they honestly don't need to.  The double-spend problem has been solved. The tech can be duplicated and enhanced in an infinite number of ways now.  At this point, there is nothing unique about Bitcoin other than it was first. Any merchant accepting Bitcoin can easily accept an alternative and they will move to that which consumers deem useful, which means it needs to be available.  And of course, not taxed as property.  That's just a non-starter.

So.  How many people have Bitcoin where you live?  People just don't seem to get it.  Look how many merchants have joined since the $1200 run up.  Did it matter? No, because nobody has Bitcoins to spend and those that do have them are holding. But it makes sense, why in the hell would you spend a deflationary currency?  

Most people don't buy worldwide, they buy local.  On top of that, Bitcoin's not useful because it is poorly distributed and slow.  For remittences, there are already better options.  Just because Bitcoin was first, doesn't mean it will be here in the end.  As a long time Bitcoin bear, none of this is surprising.  It was inevitable.   People can't spend, what they don't have.

I think ponzi is the wrong term.  It more resembles a pyramid.  Not the tech, that's irrelevant but the way it's promoted is 100% pyramid.  That's why it doesn't matter how many businesses "accept" Bitcoin, the price keeps falling. Nobody is buying and certainly not to use as a transactional currency.    Greed killed Bitcoin and better alternatives, with better distribution will reign.  You see, it doesn't matter how high you can pump the price of something, if it's not useful to people, they won't use it.  It's as simple as that.  

Bitcoin is just proof-of-concept.  We're already seen better tech, with better options coming online.  Over the next 5 years, we'll continue to see an explosion of next gen. cryptocurrency options that will put the blockchain to shame.  That's just the way technology goes and since Bitcoin doesn't have enough developers dedicated to the core, there's no way Bitcoin is going to be able to keep up.  People are too busy making money off Bitcoin to care about the core.

From what I've seen from the media, they may make mistakes like assuming "Gox is Bitcoin" but from an economics standpoint, most of the ones I've heard speak about Bitcoin, are far more knowledgeable than most people on this forum.  Seems if you watch a couple of conspiracy theory videos on the Federal reserve and shout "to the moon", you're some how an expert in currency, monetary systems and economics.  

They also have the advantage of not living in a Bitcoin "bubble", where anything contradictory to the zealot rantings, is merely dismissed as hating or ignorance.  Bitcoin is not rocket science and many of the critiques about Bitcoin are extremely valid.  Bitcoin still has a lot to prove.  There is nothing guaranteed about a digital, deflationary currency's prospects of success.

Where did this come from?     I have used Bitcoin plenty.  I started with Bitcoin.  That's how I know first hand, there are better, faster and more versatile options for my needs.

So, actually you did just hit me with one-world currency nonsense.  "...there won't be anything else you can use..."  Come on man.  I don't see how anyone can look around the crypto-space and actually say that with a straight face.  

Bitcoin is not the internet and doesn't scale well enough to be on such a level of global penetration.  There is and will continue to be, many forms of cryptocurrency.  Not to mention, fiat and an infinite number of things people can deem as valuable.  This of course is why I love Ripple. Many currencies and many things of value, is the present and the future.  Not a one-world currency.  

I repeat, I will never put money back into Bitcoin, on pure principle and I won't miss it for a second.  However, if I break that commitment, I will find this thread and update it.  I'm a man of my word.  

Everyone who responded to the above quote, is totally missing the big picture.  

1.  You're under the assumption that because VC's are dumping money into a trend, it's automatically going to succeed.  How many VC's lost money in the .com bust?  VC's aren't psychic.  The just represent pools of money, large enough to take gambles on a lot of different things.  

2.  You can have all the infrastructure you want, if the value of Bitcoin is based on speculation, it will never be stable.  Thus, the majority of the general public, is not going to put money into Bitcoin, just to make purchases and certainly not as a store of value.  It's way too risky.

3.  Since the Bitcoin mantra is "buy and hold", anyone you convince to buy, is going to hold.  They aren't buying Bitcoin to make purchases.  Debit cards don't cost anything and that's why VISA and Mastercard are destroying every other payment type, by volume.

4.  You're now going to say how much merchants can benefit.  Agreed...but merchants can't make people buy Bitcoin, to save them money.  Consumers don't care if a purchase costs the merchant 3% + $0.25

5.  The poor distribution of Bitcoin, means the majority of the planet will not have access to Bitcoin.  People can't spend, what they don't have.  Again, doesn't matter how many merchants accept it.  This is why the price keeps falling, even though a boat load of merchants have come on board, since the $1200 high.  Bitcoin value is not based on merchant adoption or actual transactions.  It's based on speculation and it's killing Bitcoin, as a currency.

It has become abundantly clear to me that while the future of monetary transactions will owe a great debt to Bitcoin, it was not distributed properly, it was not promoted properly (buy and hold) and it does not scale well enough, to be all you want it to be.  At least, not all by itself.  If it survives, it will do so as part of a larger collection of digital currencies that together will form ubiquity.

Bitcoin will serve one group of the population.  Maybe Litecoin another section, Dogecoin another...and so on and so forth, until the entire planet has access to digital currency.  Currencies with better distribution models like Dogecoin and others, have a better opportunity at having a much larger share of the population as holders.  It doesn't need to be speculated to $1000 each, it just needs to be available and useful. I personally would rather have $100 in a stable currency for spending purposes, that didn't require me to deal with 0.01.  I'd rather look at 100.00.  With Bitcoin being up in the nosebleed section, it just doesn't make sense for me to buy-in and use as a currency, or as a speculative investment, knowing these overwhelming limitations.  Crypto is crypto.  Whichever one is more user friendly is the winner, because they all do the same thing.