Are people threatened by Ripple?
Short answer is absolutely.
I think most people that support Bitcoin today are still early adopters and my experience is that they were drawn to Bitcoin because a distaste for corporations, governments, and the fat cat elite. Bitcoin is the currency of no entity.
Nobody owns it so the market is ALL that drives its value, not marketers, the elite bankers, elite politicians, venture capitalists et cetera. I myself am really just interested in making money. Overthrowing of centralized, governed currencies is a side benefit.
However, currencies of any sort Bitcoin or Fiat are only valuable because a population all agrees they are. There is no fundamental reason that Ripple could not create a perceived value more than Bitcoin. It could happen overnight.
To the average investor the difference between Ripple and Bitcoin is meaningless technical or new-world-order drivel. To the Bitcoin advocate Ripple is evil and perpetuates the very problems Bitcoin is intended to resolve. The fact that old school Venture Capitalists are involved in Ripple is enough to send most Bitcoin fans running in disgust. Bitcoin is a chance to overthrow these entrenched financial gluttons. Ripple also reminds people of MLMs and pyramids, where a few elite create a system that will guarantee to benefit them and everyone else pays for the illusion they create. Most Alt coins fit in this bucket. Bitcoin in the community is immune from this stigma because the perception is that there was no financial elite that created it in the first place. Who knows if that is true or not.
I am an investor in BTC so i fear that there are hurdles on the horizon that BTC won't overcome. My fears are in this order: governments, alt coins, Bitcoin protocol limitations
I will probably buy some Ripple as a hedge against BTC because Ripple probably is much better suited to win out against all three of my concerns: can be completely regulated, is a digital currency, has traditional management support for dealing with future problems. I won't buy Ripple because I support it, I will buy it because I need to hedge my BTC investment. Crypto currency is the future no doubt about it.
If I can choose, i would want Bitcoin to win and centralized institutions to lose big (for now I include Ripple in this evil bucket). However, I am not sure that is how it is going to work out.