Edit: People are missing my point, I know this guy is an independent troll (and an extremely poor one) and unaffiliated with the ripple company.
TL;DR: There are already people with incentives to promote XRP over Bitcoin, and once ripple is big enough, the creators can, and will, just stop dealing with Bitcoin altogether and promote XRP as the new BTC. They only ever used BTC to get the ball rolling.
So by the time many of you read this, the threads will probably all have been deleted, but there is a spammer right now making threads about the fed about to announce a worldwide bitcoin seizure and other random FUD across all the forums here, all while promoting ripple.
He probably wasn't told by ripple to do this, so ask yourself, why would someone want to demote bitcoin but promote ripple if they are truly complementary? What benefit would this bring to the spammer?
Right now, yes, ripple and bitcoin can coexist just fine and even help eachother. But ripple is simply a parasite using bitcoin as a host. They need some way to get the ball rolling, and bitcoin is their ticket. Then, once popular enough, they will come out and say "it just makes more sense to use XRP instead of Bitcoin" and detach.
Then Bitcoin will once again be back to square one for trying to steer the public away from a centralized currency, meanwhile the ripple employees are rich as all hell from holding half of all the XRP.
Even misterbigg (one of the most relentless ripple shills here) admitted to this in his thread:
then maybe in some distant future Ripple could be a competitor to Bitcoin
For those interested, I snagged a quote from the aforementioned spammer:
ATTENTION:
THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, THE FEDERAL RESERVE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE UNITED STATES TREASURY HAVE RAIDED MORE THAN A DOZEN KEY BITCOIN INDIVIDUALS AND IS ABOUT TO ANNOUNCE A FULL SCALE BITCOIN CONFISCATION FOR MONEY LAUNDERING
BITCOINS CAN COTAIN "SILK ROAD TAINT" IF YOUR BITCOIN INPUTS HAS BEING IN A TRANSACTION SENT TO THE SILK ROAD. MONEY LAUNDERING CHARGES ARE BEING PROSECUTION, THEYMOS HAS SIGNED A PLEA BARGAIN. THE SEIZURE WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE NEXT FEDERAL RESERVE MEETING, SIMILAR TO THE CLOSURE OF THE GOLD WINDOW.
RIPPLE IS NOT AFFECTED
But, as always, i'm open to being proven wrong. Just please read my post carefully and understand that I believe ripple's goal is to replace bitcoin IN THE FUTURE once it's on its feet, so spare me the arguments of how it can help out bitcoin in the present.