But those are contradicting statements.
I'm pretty sure the intent of my statement was quite clear, there is no NEED for Ripple's "medium" of transferring wealth from one type to another when I can just go to a currency exchange and achieve the exact same goal without needing to use Ripple's convoluted web of trust.
Exactly exchanges don't but Ripples does, that is the principle it is building on. Think about it if they have many gateways that can hold the currencies for them, and people would make the decision of who and where they feel their wealth safe, then opencoin minimizing their own risk and attack vectors. It is hard to wrap your mind around it, but it makes sense once you do.
It is not hard to wrap my head around, it is just entirely unnecessary unless you WANT to trade on IOU's in which case you are most likely either someone who has nothing of value to trade or you're a scammer with multiple accounts who builds up a decent web of trust until it reaches a target amount, then you trade on as many IOU's as you can which you then never pay back. That account is then no longer trusted and you move onto the next account you've been building up trust on, rinse and repeat...