- Ripple is centralized
- Ripple is no store of value - XRP's are controlled (and premined) by OpenCoin
- Ripple is debt based (you are not transferring assets like in BTC, you are transferring debt)
- Ripple implies that you trust a series of gateways, which is totally contrary at the core value of Bitcoin (no need to trust any third party)
1 and 2: They claim to change this soon.
3: Wrong, Ripples are the same as Bitcoins in that respect. They are not subject to any counterparty, and they have no underlying value besides a Ripple denomination with floating exchange rates.
4: This is only the case for any other currency except for Ripples within the Ripple system, and that includes Bitcoins same as Dollars. Which is why Ripple will kill Bitcoin if it is adopted significantly.
You guys need to learn a thing or two before teaching others, I keep reading all these misconceptions.
1 and 2: That will change? They may release the source code, but what are they doing with the XRP's they premined?
About debt: when you transfer your $ inside the Ripple system, your are just exchanging IOU's. And nothing stops a Ripple supernode (lol, I couldn't help myself) from issuing more IOU's than he can cover. It's just fake "paper" money again, in its digital form.
Personally I dislike Ripple and I hope it fails hard. I see it as an opportunistic way to profit from Bitcoin's genius idea, while spoiling it from its revolutionary proposals (one of them is mining, and there are many others).
I grant you that maybe I was overly optimistic we I said "neutral mid and long term". In other posts I also acknowledged that Ripple idea is clever, and it has the potential to undermine Bitcoin adoption. But frankly, I believe there will be a lot of people like you and me who will still see Ripples flaws, and will prefer to stay with Bitcoin - or with another superior cryptocurrency, which is not Ripple in any case.