Yeah, fiat is a bitch, that is part of why fiat has to go. We are trying like crazy to make it go away but its taking time. Next question?
-MarkM-
It will take time if you take the wrong approach. Despite the fact that the Ripple people do have a challenge explaining the principles of Ripple, I believe the concept of Ripple is extremely disruptive. What the people of Ripple are doing is basically explaining the principle of money/currencies. Surprisingly, this is not an easy concept to understand. Just start asking a random person on the street where his money is coming from.
Now, having a concept like non- open source Ripple in the hands of start-up with backup of VC's, will be a Single Point of Failure of the whole concept. The start-up, the individuals behind the startup end the Venture Capitalist are subject to the jurisdiction in which they are operating and the law enforcement agencies in this jurisdiction. Ripple can be seen as a full blown threat to fiat money and potentially could disrupt all the things we are considering "normal" today.
Guess what will happen when the vision of the founders materialize. The people who will benefit the most of the current fiat money will do everything in their power to get a start up, who is printing and controlling its own money, down as soon as possible.
To make a system like Ripple successful it should be completely open source, the ledger IOU should have similar properties as BTC (may be with a demurage fee) and independent of any company or government.
