That sounds to me like a pretty good defense of Ripple as a decentralized credit network.

I agree it would be nice to add Bitcoin as a Ripplepay currency, there's some discussion of that here (https://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/browse_frm/thread/4939938b5bc33e61).

People can establish interpersonal trust through online or offline media.

What better way to complement your open p2p community money than with open p2p community credit? Ripple (http://ripple-project.org/) produces software that lets anyone establish credit relationships based on personal trust, and the emerging credit network allows payments to be routed through chains of interpersonal relationships.

You can use Ripple as a distributed credit network overlay, which seamlessly blends traditional and new economies. This makes financing easier, and also allows other tools such as automatic inter-currency exchange.

Right now there's an operational implementation available called Ripplepay (https://ripplepay.com/). You can sign up and use it freely. I think it would work great with bitcoin, as well as with other forms of credit such as national currencies, time, energy, etc. Right now there's discussion of adding a built-in bitcoin credit denomination, in the meantime it's possible to use an ad hoc substitute.

This should address some issues that have been raised in the community, including but not limited to the discussion in this thread (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=271.0). I encourage you to sign up at Ripplepay, set up your credit relationships with existing trust partners, and use it for payment and other financial options when suitable. I would be happy to extend some credit if you can show a good reason, and would accept credit at a decent rate.

I'm looking to trade <$100 of my PP for Mt Gox at around 1:1.