I think it's clear that ripple would help bitcoin but would bitcoin help ripple?

[notig]

In other words... having people use ripple would help bitcoin because it would alleviate the blockchain... it would make transactions faster.... and consequently it might also reduce the fees for micropayments even further... but most of all it would increase liquidity allowing those who want bitcoin to acquire them.

But how does bitcoin help ripple? Here are just some speculations coming from my limited understanding:

Ripple might make it easy to transfer between currencies that it will allow people more of a choice of what they want to hold. And if they could hold bitcoins as easily as they could hold dollars why would they choose the inflating currency?

If they can choose bitcoins a reason besides inflation might be that governments and banks can't confiscate bitcoins.

And finally bitcoins might make it easier to acquire ripples? I'm not sure if you can buy ripples with a credit card but surely you can buy them with bit coins so this might be a way ripple utilizes bitcoin?

what are your thoughts?

finally ........ doesn't ripple run into a HUGE problem with the new FINCEN rules?

[temor]

Ripple wouldn't even exist without Bitcoin, so the roles are completely reversed.

[dadrizforshizz]

I hope no one is actually buying ripples (RTC), they are still set to release huge chunks. Ripple seems like a good intermediary for currency  transactions (way better than paypal), but if you are speculating that a ripple will increase in value, I wouldnt. Yeah they made 100billion and a fraction disappears every time you use them, but there is nothing from stopping them to issue another 1000 billion or 100 million trillion lol. In my opinion, people looking to get in on the ground floor of the currency and "make millions" like early bitcoin adopters are wasting their cash.

[nameface]

Ripple wouldn't even exist without Bitcoin, so the roles are completely reversed.

lol

Ripple was based on a local exchange trading system, and dev work was started well before Bitcoin was released.

Bitcoin is helping Ripple grow. Ripple will help Bitcoin (and other new currencies) survive and thrive.  

[nameface]

I hope no one is actually buying ripples (RTC), they are still set to release huge chunks. Ripple seems like a good intermediary for currency  transactions (way better than paypal), but if you are speculating that a ripple will increase in value, I wouldnt. Yeah they made 100billion and a fraction disappears every time you use them, but there is nothing from stopping them to issue another 1000 billion or 100 million trillion lol. In my opinion, people looking to get in on the ground floor of the currency and "make millions" like early bitcoin adopters are wasting their cash.

RTC? WTH kinda thread is this?

They will not release more XRP. Once the source is released the number of XRP will officially be fixed, just like Bitcoin.

[dchapes]

Ripple wouldn't even exist without Bitcoin, so the roles are completely reversed.

Except that Ripple pre-dates bitcoin. classic.ripplay.com and villages.cc are where some previous implementations exist and thrive with their niche communities. Ripple never had the backing of someone like OpenCoin to push it to a wider audience and to make it distributed (once they're out of beta).

[temor]

what I'm saying is that most of the ripple userbase probably comes from bitcoin, and if they didn't use bitcoins as a way of payment my guess is that their userbase would be even smaller.

[nameface]

The Bitcoin bridge shows how Bitcoin and Ripple can interact fruitfully: https://ripple.com/blog/bitcoin-bridge-lets-ripple-users-make-payments-to-bitcoin-accounts/

Bitcoin eco-system gains easy payments from the entire Ripple network. Ripple can offer account holders great new merchant services.

They do good efficient business together.