The Standard Fee for general admission is $2,590.
Well, if USD decrease in value a modest 2% per year due to inflation, after 2025 these 2590 USD are worth less than 2000 USD are now.
About the (seemingly endless) Ripple debate - what do you honestly expect? To have the CEO of OpenCoin start to cry and sob and shout "I should have released the source code long ago, I am such a bad bad person!"? I haven't seen the Q&A session you were talking about, so I can't judge whether he was just wiggling out of some questions or if questions were just things that people just didn't get (like Ripple != XRP, you'll likely need XRP worth less than one of your wire fees from MtGox ever in your lifetime).