1.) JoelKatz all but admitted that the original Ripple idea (Community Credit/Liquidity Providers/Web of Trust) has been almost entirely discarded. That tiny portion which remains only exists to facilitate some obscure niche by a specialized user base.
This is a good thing. This complicates the message, brings discussions of trust lines and "Rippling" to the forefront when it's totally unnecessary, given the majority of the worlds population is not ready for community credit. That's an idea from the past. Maybe it will become the future one day but for now, it is totally irrelevant and IMO shouldn't be promoted in any way, shape, form or fashion.
2.) Because skepticism is necessarily pervasive in the Ripple network -the users need to be active market participants rather than passive "Liquidity Providers"- the average user is likely not to find anything particularly intriguing about putting their money into it. Hence why JoelKatz suggests that Ripple could very well end up as a Gateway/Market Maker only network.
People tend to overvalue the skepticism of Bitcoiners. Sure, it resonates on a Bitcoin forum but out of 7 billion people on the planet, these critics will largely go unheard and thus irrelevant. Ripple
is a gateway/market maker network. That's what it's for or at least, that's the purpose it best serves. As I said previously, MOST users will never even know they are using Ripple, nor will they care to know.
What they will know, is it's cheaper to use XYZ gateway over Paypal, Xoom, Dwolla and the likes. And soon, they will know the freedom to be able to send balances between major banks and other major gateways, in seconds and for virtually nothing. Just as the federation of email has changed the way we communicate, Ripple will change the way send and receive currency, how we bank and how we think about currency in general.
